Grapeviney

Let me guess. He just went up to have a look around ..

The footy gods can be fickle hey? I hope he impresses upon his younger team-mates the need to grasp their chance while they can get it, 'cos it can be over in the blink of an eye.

Watts is looking pretty ... umm.. lean

Good call SD. People who use those left their brains down in Africa ! anyway, i digress ..

the ship has run right off the rails

The good thing about Finkelstein - apart from his impeccable legal credentials - is that he already hates the media!

Seems the club has decided to brief her on its position. Interesting

pretty damning stat .. says it all really

I'm pretty sure the judging panels are made up of former / senior / eminent journos (if there is such a thing lol) and writers, the likes of les carlyon et al

What's funnier is that both papers today have the "secret dossier" prepared by the Australian Cricket team for the series against South Africa. Such a sceret that every hack has a copy! The 'Hun have even called it an "explosive development" on the eve of the first test. Not sure whether receiving a copy of said dossier from the ACB's media manager qualifies as an "explosive development", but hey ..

Yep, but all the news organisations do to some extent http://www.walkleys.com/current-sponsors

People are ignoring the fact that her copy was given the green light by the age's lawyers. Although there are occasionally successful defamation actions against journalists / media outlets, they aren't common. I haven't read anything defamatory in her stories - I'm not a legal expert, but I have been defamed, and managed to elicit a front-page apology in the offending publication for my troubles. Had she written outright that Connolly or Schwab or anyone else is a cheat, it would be a different matter entirely - you then start to have a more compelling case that your reputation has been damaged and sullied. So far it's association and innuendo and implication. But I suspect Wilson has seen the statements / spoken to one or two of the less senior / fringe members of staff who were at the meeting that day, and that this forms the basis of her claims. The stories have faltered on two fronts; passing off Connolly's gag as the raison d'etre of the so-called vault meeting, and mistaking the venue of the meeting for its supposed codename. Strip those two elements away, and on my reading you're left with four-fifths of nothing. The speculation about the investigators revisiting witnesses and trying to match up accounts suggests that all but a couple of rogues are singing from the song-sheet. None of that will matter though if we are ultimately found guilty in the investigation; then you can expect CW to win a Walkley and possibly claim the scalp of an MFC official or two.

There's an apocryphal story going around about the writer compiling a book of stories about public figures who died on the job The working title: "They came as they went"

The London Sun had a ripper many years ago, around the time that the Major Government was up to its eyeballs in sleaze. The Government released a tough Budget, prompting the headline: "Now we've all been screwed by Cabinet." Other faves include: Headles Body in Topless Bar (N.Y Post) ; and Iraqi Head Seeks Arms (News of TheWorld) Locally, the Mx had a good one the day after Julia Gillard gave her so-called misogyny speech: "Julia Caesar"

Surely the best ever sporting headline came when the lowly-ranked Caledonian Thistle thrashed Celtic in the Scottish FA Cup a number of years ago: "SuperCalaGoBallisticCelticAreAtrocious"

Apparently Sam Blease is going to get off lightly. At this stage he's only considered to have half (a) tank

absolutely, it suggests she's seen words to that effect in a statement

im guessing she's seen the statements of one or two players / coaches who have clearly fingered connolly and quite possibly schwab .. even if there is conflicting testimony, or it's outweighed in the end, she'll still be able to point to what she had as justification for the claims / accusations

the problem is that all her pieces would have been heavily legalled at the age before going to print, so she's obviously got enough to cover her backside in terms of defamation (presuming the age's lawyers have done their jobs properly)

no, but like any large organisation, they are to some extent at the whim of the press and what they perceive to be popular opinion .. it's the same as how governments regularly cave in to public pressure having said that, the AFL have a decent history of absolutely thumbing their noses to the 'voice of the people' and even going about it in a pig-headed way it may well be that demetriou tries to barrel his way through this maintaining a line of 'this is still not tanking and bugger the lot of you i'm satisfied clubs have not engaged in the systematic and deliberate losing of matches. case closed.'

oops that wasn't meant to happen

was it really the wrong thing to do to start yet another thread on this? yes, it was

was it really the wrong thing to do to start yet another thread on this? yes, it was

was it really the wrong thing to do to start yet another thread on this? yes, it was