sue

Reading this thread over the last couple of days has convinced me of one thing. If the people posting here really are planning to stand for the board as some allege, I wouldn't vote for them (if I knew who they were). There just has to be other candidates able to present an argument without resorting to personal abuse.

Well said Nutbean. A lot of the aggro on this forum starts with someone stating an opinion without an "I think" qualification. Maybe we should take that as read unless someone makes a very bold claim of fact. Also it is a fact, universally acknowledged, that people with minority opinions always feel hard done by. Apologies to J Austin. Re the CC quotes to add to rpfc's last post: Even if this unnamed person is quoting from the report, we shouldn't forget our journo may be doing some selective quoting. For example, I've seen people putting the boot into CC for saying his recollections were hazy rather than just saying, 'yes I said it, but was joking'. He could well have said both without contradicting himself, but only one part is published. (Once again for any CC-haters out there, I have no opinion of him either way, just a low opinion of some journos and whatever is going on in all this. As interesting as speculating on all this may be, we shouldn't get our knickers in a twist over every report that comes out.) edit to add last sentence.

Which gets me thinking about the process. Could it be at interview #2 the interviewee is told, you said x when we interviewed you before, but Y said xxx when we interviewed him. Is he right? "ummm, Y's a good bloke, I guess he's right." Put that though 5 iterations and you could probably get people swearing to almost anything.

It may not be a leak. Could it be that journos are just looking for daily copy and so thinking 'what would MFC reasonably do' and constructing a story? After all, unless you are 100% certain you'll shoot down the accusations if you played all your cards initially, you may want to keep some things up your sleeve. Or alternatively, leak the impression you have something that will be dropped on the AFL if they dare impose an unacceptable penalty. So while it is keeping some of us entertained speculating (and some of us p!ssed off), we really shouldn't read too much into anything published at this stage.

yep, and '60 statements' was irrelevant to the point I was making. Unlike you I wasn't rudely telling the earlier poster that he was an idiot for not reading the article carefully. I was merely pointing out that it was worded to look like CC or his lawyer were saying those things, but in fact it was just some unspecified person being quoted. I read it the wrong way myself first time. You have noticed that I'm not the only person who thinks you are rude?

But by reporting 60 if they gave 5(!) statements each (or whatever) the journo is clearly trying to put the boot in rather than report. Just like you in initial response trying to mock me for omitting the word 'statements'. I conclude that you couldn't help taking a cheap shot at me because I've dared to disagree with you in the past. What a lovely chap you must be. edit:spelling

You are assuming CC or his legal rep has something to do with the report in the paper. If you read it carefully you will see that it is "a legal representative with knowledge of the report said". That could be somebody with no connection to CC. Note to AdC et al, I'm not defending CC. I'm pointing out you can't trust these journos. Especially one who has 60 witnesses at a meeting attended by 12.

Well reasoned. But I find it hard to believe that anyone who was interviewed would have raised the issue of Watts not playing enough. Anyone who did would be totally ignorant of footy (so no reason to interview them) or were digging a hole for the investigators or they were being malicious (but stupid). None of these seem very plausible.

I appreciate it too including BH's (just in case anyone thinks I'm not interested in the actual footy).

it does, but you've probably noticed there is none on now. But it's true I don't post much about things like will player x be better than y because I don't feel I have any special knowledge. I live interstate and can rarely get to a match. I don't feel I learn much watching games on TV. But like everyone else, I have opinions on human motivations etc.

Fair enough, everyone is entitled to be bored by different things. Personally when new ridiculous accusations are raised daily in the media, I find it interesting to speculate on what may really be going on and see what other members think. Certainly more interesting than MFC supporters taking endless boring pot-shot at each other.

The AFL has made me so cynical that that never occurred to me. I guess that plus a desire to bury it may be the answer. Here's hoping.

It seems to me that the only explanations offered so far of why the rubbish is in the report (if it is indeed in it) are either that: Fink/MFC demanded that it be included because they had heard on the grapevine that some stupid things were in a draft or knew from interviewees that they had been raised, and demanded they be included. And that outweighed the embarrassment to the AFL of being associated with such rubbish in the report handed to the MFC, so they agreed to include it. or the AFL was prepared to look silly in order to bury tanking or the investigators were so independent of the AFL that the AFL was not able to review/edit their report before it went to the MFC. None are very convincing to me.

You're assuming it is in there. RobbieF raised the interesting idea that maybe MFC is putting out things to unearth leakers. Dr John Dee's has an interesting angle on it, though I'd be surprised if the AFL and Clothier/Haddad are so independent of each other that the AFL couldn't review their report before it went to he MFC. Here's hoping he is right.

Yes we are on the same page. I'm just bewildered as to what a better explanations could be. But I don't think the MFC can argue a report is not fair because it omitted total rubbish which we knew had been raised in interviews. If it omitted favourable facts and statements which we knew they had gathered, then yes we could call foul. But not laughable rubbish. No one is obliged to include rubbish in a report.

Not convinced by that. I assume you are referring to the one where he says we are circulating this stuff to discredit the investigation. I'm making the case that the AFL wouldn't allow such embarrassing rubbish to be in the stuff provided to the MFC. So we'd have to be inventing the silly accusations. But as I said somewhere, in the long run that would do us no good, because when the report and our responses are made public, it would be clear that the fumbling/Watts stuff etc wasn't there. While we may get a bit of an immediate boost by discrediting the guff currently in the press, if the report really did nail us, the silly stuff would all be forgotten. And in response to DeeZee, I can't believe the AFL would want to sully its name by having such rubbish in a report commissioned by themselves. There would be other ways of putting the whole thing to bed. For example, leaving holes in the more serious accusations. Gosh, I almost typed' scully' for 'sully'

Macca - maybe I'm missing something. Surely the AFL saw the report before it was given to Finkelstien or the club. So why would we even have a chance to argue they should leave things in which we hadn't seen. So I assume you are saying because we knew such silly questions had been asked in a serious manner, we could demand they be left in the report as accusations to help our case? I don't think investigations and reports work that way. There must be a better explanation for the putative inclusion of such rubbish surely. I'm surprised that posters haven't addressed the issue much, but just fall about laughing at the absurdity of it.

I can't really see that just because the asked some dumb questions, they had to be left in the report. As I said earlier, if the AFL gets 2 footy-ignorant guys to investigate, surely they'd review the report for clangers before releasing it.

Exactly. So why would a professional body like the AFL not remove the cracks before releasing the report. Surely the AFL wouldn't want any report in their name to look so silly. If they want to bury tanking there would be other ways. So is this rubbish really in their report? If not, what purpose does saying it is in there serve?: MFC inventing stuff: in the long run it does us no good. Journos inventing: they can't be that desperate to fill pages So what is going on? Any suggestions?

OK, this has got so silly that it is time for some solid conspiracy theories. If I was asked to investigate tanking in basketball, a sport about which happily I know nothing, surely the commissioning body would get someone who was familiar with basketball to review my report before it was given to the accused team (in the event I was too stupid to have done so myself). That reviewer would remove any silly rubbish and which revealed my ignorance of basketball and made my otherwise good case subject to ridicule. So if the leaks are really from the report, what is going on? Even if the AFL wanted to bury this, surely they wouldn't want any report in their name to look so stupid. Is some comedy-writer at the MFC inventing this stuff to discredit the investigation? But that wouldn't work in the long run when all was finally revealed.

That seems likely. All the AFL had to do was say in the light of McLean's comments we have reviewed the earlier investigation and concluded it reached the right conclusion. CW et al may have backed off.

Watch out , BH will accuse you of using the "look at what other clubs have been doing" line ? What he fails to acknowledge is that as guilty and deserving of punishment the MFC may be, we are in competition with the other clubs whose infractions have not been subject to a 6 month investigation. That makes the situation different that just whinging "the other speeding driver did not get fined". The AFL either bins our case, or follows up the other investigations or we can justly feel hard done by.

No I'm not, nor am I equating the seriousness. If we broke the rules we should pay for it. But the AFL should enforce all its rules, otherwise what's the point of the rules. Anyway, where can I find the draft tampering rule? The experience of post 1660 doesn't encourage me to try to find it myself.

All true. But rule 19 says at all times, any match and any reason. So fielding a weak team to prepare for a GF breaks the rule since a coach on merit would insist on his best team playing. ‘A person, being a player, coach or assistant coach, must at all times perform on their merits and must not induce, or encourage, any player, coach or assistant coach not to perform on their merits in any match - or in relation to any aspect of the match, for any reason whatsoever’. I haven't seen quoted a rule specifically about 'draft tampering'. Has it been posted anywhere?

OK. But there is a difference between saying we'll get picks 1 & 2 and instructing people to lose or even 'joking' that they will be sacked if we don't. I also confidently thought we'd get picks 1 & 2 because we were crap - as the whole season (and subsequent seasons) have shown. I have no brief for CC - don't know much about him even. I'm just indicating that there are ways he could dodge a 'disrepute' charge. Some require a long bow admittedly, but they could be enough to make the AFL think twice.