sue

He'd be gone except for a certain phone call AD made to try to help the Bombers.

What an odd discussion. Clearly he said the sort of thing you'd expect him to say. It may be spin, but if it signs up a few more members who might not have joined otherwise, it's worth it. Other than infecting opposition players in the first 5 rounds with the flu to ensure some wins, which I guess is illegal, what else could he do to round up some more members?

Glad to hear that you are on Mitch's medical team and can share your detailed knowledge of his condition with us. How about just seeing what happens rather than making these 'calls'.

Agree totally. But sad as it is for the players, it is not a case of the law being an ass. It is the effect on future players and drug cheating which requires them to be penalised. For any of them who entered into it not knowing things were dodgy, I'd hope the penalties would not be severe. Unfortunately there probably is no way of knowing how innocent/naive the individual players were. Some probably were, some may have known they were being naughty. Sadly all must suffer.

Just read that in the other thread after I posted. Poor bugger.

Before too many razor blades are blunted it would be useful to know why he was given leave. It is not hard to think of possible reasons which aren't related to doom and gloom about his playing future.

What I found most interesting was these quotes from Dank's lawyer: Dank’s lawyer, Greg Stanton, said if any charges were eventually laid, his client would challenge ASADA’s jurisdiction and the scientific basis for including peptides such as CJC1295, SARMS and Thymosin Beta-4 on a banned list. “When and if it ever gets to a properly convened tribunal, there is a fundamental issue as to whether these substances should have ever been banned according to the relevant science in the first place,” Stanton said. “One of our ultimate goals is, and we are gathering science at this point in time, is to demonstrate that these substances should have never been banned.” They must be desperate if they think they can get anywhere going down the path of arguing the science. Even if they could produce the necessary expertise, surely WADA has to work on the assumption that if a 'supplement' is not part of ordinary nutrition and they ban it, it is banned. Even if it turns out after many years of research that the 'supplement' is totally ineffective at improving performance.

ASADA was chasing Dank last December: ASADA summoned Stephen Dank before Christmas, says barrister Gregory Stanton with a lot of weasel words by his lawyer.

But you (and I) have no idea if he is separately taken off for kicking training. If his general training was interrupted for kicking practice, as sure as night follows day, someone on this board would grumble that it should be happening at other times.

I wasn't leaving the MFC. The point I was making is that a relationship with these companies can take a long time to start, but can last a long time. Could be great for the MFC. So probably some praise to CS and maybe more to PJ, but we don't know the details of how it evolved so we can't apportion credit.

or players willing to hide behind them. With the consequences I have mentioned. BB I agree with your last statement. It will be outrageous if the people behind the program at Essendon don't get hammered and the players are penalised. Where we will have to agree to differ is that I think the players, if guilty, just have to be penalised to some extent for the integrity of the anti=drug regime. But the Hirds & co should be penalised far far more severely.

While as usual we don't know the details, on the face of it you'd have to give CS some credit for the new deal which PJ has finalised regardless of the Energywatch fiasco. I have had a lot of dealings with big companies in Asia, particularly Japan, in my work. It takes a long time to get a relationship started. But usually once it is, confidence grows and it gets deep and lasts a long time. One I was involved in is still going after 27 years.

Almost is the word. There are clearly cases of teams playing mind games with opponents. Say X is in team, oppos plan for that, and then he is replaced. I expect teams have the NSA/CIA trying to second guess this sort of thing.

I too would prefer brutal honesty. But you are assuming the spin is solely to keep supporters 'hopeful and happy'. There is probably more to it. But even if not, there is no reason to assume that the feelings of people on this board are typical of the average supporter, paid up or potentially paid up. What if in their corporate wisdom the Dees (along with all the other clubs apparently), have decided spin to keep that more numerous class of supporters hopeful and happy is the correct policy. Then the rest of us will just have to lump it.

I know you wouldn't approve of a 'wink wink' situation. But your approval or otherwise is not in question. The issue is that if the rules allow dishonest players to think they can avoid penalties by some scheme to shift the blame, then they will do it with or without the connivance of their club. And they will then force more honest players to follow them or come last. Net result, drugs rife in sport and young people risking their log-term health for immediate glory. I would agree with you that if players can prove conclusively that they were duped and that they had made a thorough and sincere effort to establish that what they were taking was legal, then penalties would be inappropriate. But this is difficult to establish without risking the deterrence effect. In any case, I think you are in a small minority if you think the Essendon players could conclusively prove that they were duped and that they had made a thorough and sincere effort to establish that what they were taking was legal. They might say they were duped, but there is no way they could claim the latter. Edit to add: The issue of 'should have suspected' in the tanking saga is totally different. I don't many of us didn't suspect we were tanking. We argued about the vagueness of what tanking was, or just thought the rules promoted doing it and others had done it without penalty etc.

BB, no you haven't directly said that, but I think it is clear that that is your attitude. You dismiss as legal bulldust the rules and give preference to your emotions about the players being screwed. But the rules are designed as WJ has said to have a deterrent to discourage players from hiding behind coaches and playing innocent when they are not. My example is not moot. Sure it may deter some players from cheating to know their coach etc will be penalised. But you can also imagine someone hired by a dishonest club to be responsible for the policy and be the fall guy if the drug program is ever exposed. Pay people enough and there'd be a conga line of applicants for the post. I think it is possible to feel sympathy for the Bombers players, hate Hird/Reid etc but still feel the players have to be penalised. Without these rules a dishonest player can get away without penalties by having a scapegoat coach/adviser. Once players know they have a way of avoiding penalties, some will do it and the many of the rest will feel forced to follow. Then we will have lots of sportsmen endangering their health, not just a few Bombers. You have not addressed this last point in any post I've read. If you have, please point me to it.

Yes, but we have new people in charge. I don't think they are reading all this and changing their plans as a result. So what is the point of endlessly banging on about past errors.

BB, I'd be interested to hear your views on why reinforcing the deterrence effect is less important than penalising the 'duped innocent' players. In the case of normal criminality, it is of course unthinkable that innocent people would be punished to deter others (though sadly instances of that are not unknown), but the situation is different with drugs in sport for the reasons I and others have outlined. For example, without the deterrence effect non-innocent players could arrange to have a coach willing to act as a scapegoat, and despite being known to have cheated, get away with the fruits of their 'crime'.

No idea. Don't have much information to go on. So I'm neither slitting my wrists nor buying my finals tickets. Will just have to wait & see.

OldDee you are always on a winner (despite barracking for the Dees). The comforting thing about making negative predictions is that when they turn out correct one can quietly boast about how prescient one was, and if wrong one can lose oneself in the general joy by saying how happy you were to be proved wrong.

BB you express sympathy for the players and many of us share and understand that concern. But the result of not penalising them is that future drug cheating will be encouraged and other players will be sucked into drug cheating/experimentation. They don't have names yet, but they deserve your sympathy too. And there would be many more of them.

Yes we are, but we are not in the same situation as sportsmen. You are allowing your sympathy for the players being screwed by their club to cloud your judgement. To expand on the point Redleg and I made, if players are not punished for drug taking in these circumstances, the norm for real drug cheats and their clubs will be to employ a scapegoat coach who takes the rap if they are caught out.

Llyod's saying it's time for the AFAL and ASADA to take some responsibility for the players mental health take the cake. If the club was really concerned about their players' mental health due to their uncertainties, they would either magically produce a list of what each player was injected with or threaten Dank with some legal action to produce his records from when he was employed by them. I don't know what legal case they would have a right to mount, I guess it might depend on the contract they had with Dank. But threatening an action would at least make it look like they cared. On the other hand if no-one really does know what was injected, a lot of people should be resigning in shame and donating their $1M to a fund to cover future medical costs.

Even if you leave aside the issue of individual player responsibility there is a problem with not penalising the players, no matter how much sympathy one might have for the players and the abominable way their club has treated them. The problem for drug enforcement authorities is that if they don't go after the players, in future players and clubs who did want to cheat could create a similar environment and could use the lack of penalties as a precedent. This could make the idea of cheating less unattractive and so more cheating would result. However innocent/naive you might think the Essendon players are, there will always be players so desperate to succeed that they will willingly risk their health.

I don't have much sympathy for the lack of action by Essendon payers either, but perhaps there was a part of their minds unconsciously assuming it was unthinkable that a professional AFL club could do anything so dodgy. When they come to realise how wrong they were, the excrement will hit the fan. Possibly even if they escape immediate penalties.