deejammin'

Saty I think it's disgusting that the whole thing has been reported and discussed in such a biased way that the whole issue has been distorted and an obvious attempt to cheat has been treated with sympathy rather than the objective view it deserved. I don't think or mean that anyone is disgusting, sorry if I offended or upset anyone and I'm sorry my words could be interpreted that way mate. I would have been better served by saying "distressing".

Lol. Good call.

Justin Quill is also an interesting choice to give his opinion on this issue given he is not a industrial relations lawyer but rather a leading Media and publications lawyer with his bigger clients including AFL media and the Herald Sun. Source: http://www.mk.com.au/our-people/justin-quill/

I didn't read it selectively. I told you that I don't doubt that Essendon players may have a strong negligence case. But when weighing up the strength of a lawyers argument it doesn't help his credibility when the one categorical legal statement he makes in the article is wrong.

That's fascinating if true, can you point me to where you learned this and some proof of this? It still doesn't change the circumstance that in the case of a large amount of litigation lawyers of both sides think they have a case and one side is almost always wrong on the verdict. 50% is more of a saying/exaggeration and there are some unscrupulous lawyers out there who give disingenuous advice to get cases and some clients who force lawyers to argue cases they don't think can win. But overall a large amount of honestly given legal advice by good professionals is found against regularly.

Interesting to quote an article that is 8 months old and also wrong. Quill says: "You don’t get many guarantees from lawyers, but I can almost guarantee you that there will not be any appeal or anything like that from this decision,” Then the Essendon players appealed the CAS decision, so for a "leading sports lawyer" he's already got one thing wrong. I don't doubt his assertion that the players could potentially win a negligence claim against Essendon, but the thing about legal advice is that 50% of it is wrong. Just ask James Hird's lawyers.

I also think they are guilty clearly. And I understand that the younger players faced a tougher circumstance than players like Jobe. But the treatment of this issue in the media and by some on this forum, being so desperate to excuse the players at every turn, never admitting to any of the facts of the case, has been truly disgusting. Its interesting to note the difference in the way our media has treated the Essendon players who couldn't come forward for fear of senior players and club champions versus Russian athletes whose families are threatened by a dangerous regime. Those poor poor Essendon players.

I can imagine it. But ultimately it's the same argument as the Nuremberg trials, doing something you think is probably wrong but accepting it and doing it because those more senior tell you to is actually not an excuse. I don't doubt the younger players were more naive, or heavily influenced by those senior players, but ultimately when it comes to drugs in sport if you take the substance and don't report it you have no leg to stand on. A lot of Essendon players could have been saved a lot of time and money if just one player had been brave enough to report. Some players clearly said no, look at Zaharakis. (Sorry Ted tried to quote you and got my own)

Interestingly none of the Essendon players managersor the AFLPA were kept fully informed by their players on the program at Essendon either. So while I see your point, the players only have themselves to blame, they were fully able to fill out their ASADA forms, speak to Bruce Reid or speak to their managers but chose to maintain secrecy for a competitive edge, that is not innocent behaviour and I don't see why so many are so keen to excuse it.

I really hope you're right. Jesse has been a bit up and down this but overall his performance has him in the top 2 or 3 young key forwards in the comp and he can improve. I don't like this new era of massive player movement and loyalty and contracts meaning next to nothing. It would be really nice to be able to support a similar looking, improving best 22 for a few years. And considering the excellent job our club has done in keeping key players this year Jesse is the final piece of the puzzle. I really hope he stays and all this WC stuff is just media noise.

It seems to me young AFL players say no to their bosses all the time. They say no to contracts, they say no to staying if they have a better offer, they say no to giving the club an idea of their intentions, some really talented players say no to different roles, they say no to staying an hour away from their hometown, we had one who lied to a club champion who was dying of cancer for a whole year to take a big contract. The good ones say no to booze with friends, unhealthy food, staying out late, etc etc. But when it comes to saying no to taking an enormous amount of injections that contravene your ASADA/AFL training, aren't administered by a doctor or nurse, aren't told to the club doctor or put on ASADA forms before matches it's all of a sudden impossible to say no. I think you should get your hand off it.

Wow, you are a hair splitter aren't you. CAS the worlds leading authority and top arbiter of doping in professional sport found to a "comfortable satisfaction", CAS's determinant of guilt for all its cases that "all players were significantly at fault" for violating the code by taking a nominated banned substance which was Tb4. You can argue legal wording semantics all you want but the result is the same. All doping cases worldwide are judged by comfortable satisfaction, this is the standard by which guilt is judged in doping in professional sport. Tb4 was the substance the players were accused of taking that violated the code. The highest court in the world on drugs in sport found to the worldwide standard for the leading code in drugs in sport that Melksham and his colleagues took TB4. Melksham= Banned drug cheat

Great post, I missed this before I posted my less detailed one above. Got fired up by the ignorance of Saty's comments on the subject and skipped ahead. Beautifully put Bing.

Thymosin Beta 4 has been categorically proven in numerous research studies to promote advanced healing in human muscle, organ and bone tissue. A simple google search will provide you with all you need. It's main medical function when administered in the large injected dosages like the Essendon players received is to help with the quicker healing of heart tissue after major heart attacks, it also promotes the same kind of rapid healing in all muscle tissue. It is banned because the majority of increase in athletes fitness comes from making small breaks in muscle tissue due to excercise and having them repair stronger. Tb4 speeds this process up to superhuman levels. Saty I respect your love of the Mfc and your enormous contribution to most threads, particularly training. But Jake Melksham was found guilty of taking Tb4 in large dosages to aid his athletic performance at a time when it was banned. He is a drug cheat, he's done his time and will be welcomed back by MFC supporters but no amount of blurring lines because you are unaware of details of peptides like Tb4 changes that fact.

Boofheads like Boofheads, Robbo, Sam Newman QED

Great stuff. Its the whole problem with drugs in sport once they have been taken where do the benefits for the cheating athletes/disadvantages for everyone else end? Essendon have already tainted 4 seasons of football by playing with the benefits of extensive PED use. Thankfully they didn't win the flag but who knows what impact they had on ladder positioning and percentage? Would the other results have been the same? There should be universal outrage from all supporters, other players and club administrators about the way this has tainted the results of every year from 2012-2015. Instead there's actually debate about whether a player who won an individual medal at the height of an illegal performance enhancing drug program should give it back? Incredible influence Essendon PR and AFL HQ business as usual has had...

Nobody on here, but the AFL media machine will go nuts about it and at some point patronisingly tell struggling clubs that GWS has the blueprint to success while we all wonder how the hell any team can get 30 first round draft picks over 3 years. Gold Coast has stuffed it up but also had bad luck, if O'meara, Swallow, Ablett and co played 20 games together for this season with Lynch in the forward line they would be in serious finals contention. They could be pushing for finals next year with a better run with injuries and some good trades. We'll never know how much was concessions how much was astute management. If we could go back in time and halve the concessions and salary cap given to both teams my guess would be that we would see a more even competition with GWS having more good will as they would earn their success like every other club.

If the concessions given to either GWS or Gold Coast were given to any Victorian club every other club administrator and member would be screaming bloody murder about the Comp being fixed. Both these clubs have had more first round draft picks than any club ever, they also have had the unprecedented ability to trade players like Hogan etc for what was meant to be senior players. They still have no fixed salary cap. GWS also had a clear advantage on Gold Coast as they watched what they did with their concessions and improved it and their academy includes traditionally Victorian zones and has yielded better results. Despite all this if Gold Coast had had slightly better luck with injury we would be seeing them in finals too. Im sure a lot of people at GWS have got a lot right and worked very hard, but it's hard to get excited about something that has so clearly been manufactured. Think of the debate around giving teams like Melbourne and now Brisbane ONE priority pick then look at GWS and Gold Coast's draft concessions, it would have been ridiculous for them not to succeed, and we're still only at the beginning... Getting excited about GWS winning finals is like getting excited about big banks making profits. Sure some people were smart and worked hard, but the system was fixed from the beginning.

Luke Hodge and Joel Selwood seem to spend more time talking to the umpires than any other captains in the league....

While I respect and understand your comment I actually think the biggest success of the Essendon, Hird and his sympathisers campaign has been to con fans into thinking the bold statement. Essendon came into 2012 having been spanked by Carlton in the first Elimination final with a list most thought would need to go backwards before it went forwards. They started out the season unexpectedly on fire winning their first 9 games in a row with amazing fitness and strength before an unprecedented spate of soft tissue injuries crippled the list and their season. The reality is a lot of people think the performance enhancing drugs mustn't have worked as Essendon didn't make finals, but really had they kept their pumped up players on the park they could probably have made finals or even top 4 based on their first 9 rounds. The combination of the drugs enabling the Essendon players to get too big too soon for their own bodies and bad luck is what I believe kept them from succeeding, not a failure of Tb4 and other substances to enable them to recover faster and endure larger training loads than a clean athlete. Also on Jobe Watson compare his 2012 stats to every other year he played and you will see a sharp spike in almost every category, 3 more possessions a game than his next best year, 2 more marks etc etc. Sure some players have a blinder but the coincidental fact that in the year he was being injected with a number of substances including Tb4 he played so much better than his career average and the good luck that unlike his colleagues he didn't succumb to injury and was able to take the park during the height of the Dank/Robinson/Hird program says to me that his performance was clearly enhanced by what CAS has found to be illegal performance enhancing substances. We'll never know how much worse Essendon or Jobe would have gone without the program, maybe it would have been the same, but this is the eternal argument of drugs in sport and given the rigour and systematic intensity of Essendons program in 2012 and their improved performance during that time it's highly, highly likely that drugs helped both the team and Jobe win his Brownlow. Its a shocking endictment on the Afl and AFL media that this hasn't been discussed more openly and this blanket "the drugs didn't work anyway" argument has been allowed to be preeminent. As to anyone who looks at it logically it seems highly, highly unlikely that the drugs didn't help in some way.

In many ways the fallout of the past two weeks is that it gave ammo back to those with an axe to grind against our footy club. The Damien Barrett, Greg Denham, Rohan Connolly brigade will start up with this stuff again when they had largely fallen silent or turned their aim on other clubs. Anyone who watches MFC enough knows we improved this year, and has good reason to believe we will again next year. But the meek, shameful performances in the last two weeks gave the portion of the media determined to protect North and Essendrug by potting Melbourne enough that for the next six months we will hear how Kelly is better than Tyson and Salem, that Hogan is going and that Goodwin may not be a good coach and Melbourne may not be improving. None of these things may be true, but these muppets will peddle it, and perhaps our players deserve it after those games. The great shame is that MFC supporters don't deserve to hear it again, we have stuck fat and have a lot to be proud of and to look forward to. Our season was more promising than at least 7 other clubs, but you won't hear that. I admit I was hoping for a good showing against Carlton and Geelong (aside from the obvious finals chance) because it would make this offseason the quietest one on the MFC bagging front for many years. The players now owe the fans the crap (like this RC article) we will now have to put up with for six months and that is bloody annoying, improvement or no.

So Roosy said in his final pressed that the things that show clear improvement this year were a percentage over 100, gone as of today, back down into the 90s. A team that had been more consistently in games including not getting belted in losses, that ended with the biggest belting of the last 3 years (and Roosy's career). And that the best win of his tenure was the one over GWS in round 23 last year as it set up a huge preseason. Well we now go into this preseason with the beginning of an untried coach with an demoralising, soulless performance. Ive seen improvement this year and genuinely enjoyed being a MFC supporter for the first time in ages and 3 weeks ago I would have told you that even if we were to lose the last two games we would be competitive and show a lot to look forward to next year. Now I'm honestly not so sure, it seems we still haven't turned the corner and that if there has been any internal quiet change over to Goodwin these last two weeks things look worrying for his tenure. Typical MFC to turn such a promising year into such tripe.

Great news!! Ideal world 3-4 years for Tom but hopefully there are triggers for an extension. Hopefully GNF's info on Hogan is on point and this will be the first offseason I don't have to agonise about our players leaving! Well done MFC. Classy year all round. Now for the sweetest two words in the English language to come to fruition... mathematical possibility....

Call me a pessimist but I won't be comfortable until pen hits paper for all four. Clearly Tommy is the biggest worry, and Jack and Dean sound very likely to stay, but for my jangled nerves and MFCSS I'd really like to see this done now.

Must sign: Jesse Hogan Tom McDonald Jack Watts Dean Kent All huge for the future of this club, all yet to hit their peak. All heart and soul players. I hope our list managers are doing the right thing and signing all four ASAP.