robbiefrom13

Essendon's cheating and using money and lawyers to fight the AFL's and anyone else's right to call them to account is on a different spectrum to our shortcomings. Totally different. Is that not obvious to some?? This is unprecedented. And unrepentant.

Canberra is not the only option. How well are GWS doing there? Big milestone approaching in Tassie, with AFL attending and meetings planned I believe...

whatever is done to the players should be nothing compared to what is done to the people who have done all this. And I think it has to have been and still be so widely spread through the people running the club that there would be nothing left but the players.

AFL talking to Tasmania...

my focus is not on Essendon as such, but on the iceberg that I think they are the tip of. The Titanic was sunk by what was under the surface, not the bit sticking out visibly. It's true that I feel intense hatred for Essendon, but I think that the Essendon case is a major test case (for both the regulation of sport and for criminal elements potentially about to swoop into the opportunity of large-scale supplying drugs into sport). As I see it, the fate of Essendon is minor compared to the fate of drug-free sport that hangs in the balance here. Not revenge therefore, but desire to see sport survive as we have known it - as athletic, not criminal-infiltrated pharmacological, competition.

If Essendon is not slaughtered for this it will be a green light for drugs, and every club will be obliged within a year or two to get a shonky pharmacist on board, just to compete. And then if being competitive costs you the occasional slap on the wrist, and a player or two misses 4-6, it will be just another dimension of the risks of playing AFL weighed against the reward. Soon enough, seen as nothing at all - like speeding. Petracca got unlucky, the medics try to minimise it, and we carry on. Drug cheating is about to either become no more than that, or there is going to be a very thick very black line put through those who have systematically cheated with drugs. Leave no one in the slightest doubt. The shady crime-fringe operators watching on with opportunity in their eyes need to be persuaded to shrug and give the idea up for good. Ferocious punishment here is absolutely essential for sport to survive.

Great players are often a total enigma, and - thank goodness - there's always going to be that tantalising element of sheer chance in football. Garry Ablett was no good at Hawthorn, went back to the bush, then had another go at Geelong; weird guy, too. Robbie Flower was only 17, ridiculously skinny and timid, with his coke bottle glasses. What Liam Jurrah could do was not in any manual, and nor was what ended up happening in his life. Recruiters are never going to have criteria that guarantee anything. What a boring game it would be if they ever did - if it was predictable and by-the-numbers! (And I still think the way Roos relates to people, the type of person he is, is at least as important as his methods and system etc. We won't rise just because of more coaches watching the training drills, etc - not in my view anyway.) The draft is unfair to the kids who must submit to it if they want to play. Loyalty, vision, etc - and the sense of ownership about their ambition - these things matter, and the draft is disrespectful of all of that, and simply commodifies talented kids. It may suit the AFL and even the clubs, but it's fundamentally unfair and I imagine probably not in the spirit of protections we generally have against "restraint of trade" and even free world freedom of choice. So, for me, the bullying rules of the AFL denying players free agency in the use of their own talents stinks, and any way players can be freed of it is good. Totalitarianism stinks, no matter how convenient it may be for those with the power: it rarely maximises creativity, happiness or productivity in the long run. Let the players free from these coerced and I think unconscionable (in the sense of being drawn up by parties with very unequal strength and power) contracts: let them move when it suits them; and redraft some governing rules that don't set out to restrain the player's trade, but rather aim simply to protect the league and the clubs from a level of disruption that would threaten the teams getting onto the park on game day. Not so easy maybe, but fairer. Football is, to me (and I suspect to lots of supporters) primarily about the footballers. If my boss tried to treat me the way players get treated by the AFL, I'd tell him to F off with such bullstit, and if he persisted I'd have the bastard in the Industrial Commission. Rant. Sorry. But I'm glad my sons didn't play AFL. The money just doesn't cut it, in my opinion. Respect is what kids are entitled to. And I liked Frawley.

legal argument may determine what Essendon does with Hird - public opinion will pressure the AFL, and their respect for their own brand; just as it did when we were dealt with for not tanking. Hird is rapidly becoming unsustainable/toxic.

If Essendon will not or cannot now separate themselves from James Hird, scapegoat him and step right away, mustn't that weaken any AFL inclination to save the club?

this feels like game-day nerves/hope. But so much riding on it...

how can anyone Melbourne misspell Yeats?

you can't tell me they sell that in Launceston!

if it means enough to the uni for them to go into it with us, they must see things that we don't yet. Big uni, well resourced in all sorts of ways - why wouldn't it have real potential for us? Seems to me the uni must be able to see kudos in it somehow, and I say thankyou very much fellas, glad to have you in our corner. PhD's on stuff to make MFC better - bring it on! One of the more positive things I've heard about my old uni in some time.

Give it a rest! You (and heaps of you) have your complaints about Jack - Demi Dee expresses positive belief about Jack on the basis of thinking he will benefit from a toughening up of the team around him. Do you disagree about the toughening up of the team around Watts? Do you disagree with Demi Dee's point that someone who is not especially aggressive himself and has been criticised for not being physical enough could be expected to walk taller when surrounded by tougher team-mates? But no - you have to ignore the positive thoughts and grab for the negative spin you can put on this comment on the growth of the team and its probable impact on Watts. An attemptedly arrogant Watts, with his physique and character, and the lack of support around him, would only have invited mockery until now. I agree with Demi Dee - things may be very different this year, and if Jack is part of the general improvement in confidence and assertiveness, it will be lovely to watch. Starting the assertive and physical stuff was never going to be Jack Watts' thing - but we all know what he will have to offer when there is a space made for him to do it. (And don't pick at that - you might as well argue that everything depends on the ruckman, because he's the first cab off the rank every time there's a ball-up; or try to argue that forwards are useless because they aren't the ones who get the ball down there. Watts is a role-player. Demi Dee suggests the team is developing in a way that makes his role more viable than it has been. Good point to make, and without any need for sneering and - yawn - Watts-bashing.)

except that, for going the wallet and courts, the consequences have to have escalated dramatically. Well, should have. The real case here is not the drug cheating; that's been relegated by what is a totally unprecedented effort to get scrutiny of their behaviour disallowed. Hard to think what penalty short of expulsion could be fitting. Surely, now, it's too late, and altogether too audacious/disrespectful, to be talking of reduction of penalties.

but who else would think of "bathing in your own magnificence"? (post 81) and the "instead" - instead of what - bathing in whose magnificence, did you mean, TDI? well, I appreciate his reports - he's certainly found a valued role here - but I do think he asks for it too.

all beside the point, too - Essendon's position is that they will not be put on trial.

He said before the season started that he wanted to see the direction, how we went, etc. We really didn't win enough. So he left.

Sure, but how much denial has gone on, and how much obvious devious avoidance, since the story broke, almost TWO YEARS AGO? No obligation to think about it, still, do you think? Time slides them all to the one end, on that spectrum...

They kept the secret. Haven't broken ranks even now. Maybe it is like a cult, but there will have been any amount of people warning them, yet they chose to stay, all the way through, and still do. It's not easy leaving a cult, but people do. These guys didn't, and even when help arrived to support them, making "victim" an option, they have stuck with it. You can't go on saying they don't really have any choice now. Sorry fellas, but you have ultimately removed any doubt - you have supported the architects and drivers of this corruption, you too want to stare down attempts to have the sport clean, and get away with it; you are abetting the evasion of accountability for what must be the worst attack on the game in its history. Choosing to align so firmly with the bad guys, if ever there was any room for doubt or mitigation, you have at any rate become guilty. Just like the club, your greatest guilt comes from how you have behaved since the doping was discovered.

Essendon have done all this to themselves - it is not for the AFL to facilitate their getting around a penalty, and Essendon fielding a team post-penalty will not be realistic. For the sake of the rest of the competition, and to send the right message, Essendon the guilty club should be denied the right to compete for whatever one or two or four seasons' ban that they get. I do not support any suggestion that Essendon be helped to field a team, or be allowed to put a VFL team into the AFL. The rogue club Essendon should be simply rubbed out - forever in my opinion, even more for the legal carry-on since they got questioned than for the original mindbogglingly dishonest and destructive doping programme; but if the ultimate sanction is x many years, the AFL should be quite clear: "We don't want to see you for at least the next x many years". Sure, curse them for stuffing up the roster etc - but more important is an unambiguous and strong (and now diluted by delay) message about the game being drug-free. EFC are GONE. Has to be that way - smack and a cuddle will not work for this one - not for Essendon, not for the footy public, not for the credibility of the AFL, not for Australia's sporting image. Essendon, you broke relationship with us - and we cannot, will not, stretch the friendship that far...

so long as the AFL, ASADA, WADA, someone gets it, we'll be ok. But... The problem is, we live in the age of the bureaucrats and the spin-doctors, and we so often concede to their "pragmatic" way of thinking things through: "Make it look right"; "compliance and organisational integrity" and all that formulaic geekspeak and nerd-inspired operating procedures and protocols. We put up with businesses dumping us via recorded bullshlt-with-a-smile-in-the-voice into call centres in Manila where they know nothing about our stuff. We just let it happen to us. We've seen this happening already where Essendon have for two years successfully avoided answering the charges by exploiting our self-hogtying, when they've calmly gone about setting jurisdiction against jurisdiction, sidelined the central outrageous issue (meanwhile their offending players carry on, ever closer to their natural retirements). Similarly, disapproving supporters focus on the pre-determined limits to what penalties can be applied, and make arguments that the (very different scale) rugby case is a precedent here. There seems to be an absolute belief that no tribunal or regulating authority has any right to go outside precedents, despite this being cheating on an unparallelled (and surely, unanticipated) scale - never mind Essendon's subsequent astonishing disregard of the real issue "Drugs in Sport": Essendon think they can get away with this attack on the whole notion of clean sport, openly displaying their mantra "whatever it takes" (!!!), can do anything they like to refuse accountability (ditto, mindbogglingly, Dank - how can we have procedures that let him just say "I won't", or even more extraordinary, "if you have the trial on my terms, maybe I will"?). Why has there not been a single politician raising their voice with an attempt to brush away this mess, demanding the law be changed if this is what it gets us? Where's the boycott of Essendon games by footy fans? Where's the Essendon players saying, you can't do this to us? Where's the young player at the draft saying I won't go to Essendon? Or the free agents who came out and said they wouldn't go there? How come even our own Matty Whelan goes to work for them? It appears, everyone is fine with it, there's just the theatre of processing the thing, but really, business as usual people... And our discussion does not rise to a crescendo of demand that Essendon be hurled out forever. We are all brainwashed by "process", by PR and media lies, by the all-powerful dollar, and I just can't see anyone demanding that we "lance the boil quickly, the poison has to be spreading!!" No - it's all a fascinating saga, all watching the inventiveness and audacity of the Essendon counter-attacks, SO far ahead of the game!, even admiration of their players. And like me now, speculating on the limits of courage in those (i.e. AFL, ASADA, WADA) whose job it is to stop a rogue player or club from doing what Essendon clearly have done. And wondering if actually drugs really do undermine the game so thoroughly... This frog is half boiled already, and Essendon are taking their time, adding to the heat slowly, building up to their ultimate playing of the irrelevant card. Fact is, if you can cheat with drugs and be immune for two years, the game's already had it. How many older players will gladly accept that, already? It's surely FU Essendon - but they have only exploited endemic, society-wide tangle of bureaucratic/administrative/political/money-focused thinking that spells total inability to stamp out dishonesty and abuse. FU the whole trend, it guaranteed an entrepreneurial Essendon. We are sitting ducks. The World Trade Centre, terrorists everywhere, 1938, the fall of Rome, get complacent and hand over to the weak while the bullies mass - you are a goner. l'histoire se repete...

What the Essendon mafia are doing is in effect a takeover bid, for control of the AFL. If Essendon is successful in finding the loopholes in the present anti-drug rules, and therefore open up a way to be free to resume systematic doping, I fear the entire AFL will out of competitive necessity end up adopting Essendon's values and modus operandi. Bye bye footy as we know and love it. FU, Essendon. Why doesn't the government step in to stop such a repellant attempted takeover? The more time the Essendon legal team are allowed, the more ploys they are coming up with to tangle the whole inquiry in legalities, thus removing the focus further and further from the original alleged systematic doping offences. Essendon make no pretence of being against drugs in sport, and the whole saga is now becoming a test case for drug-cheating. Essendon must be aware of that, so must the AFL, ASADA and WADA, and so must government. The ramifications of what they are doing clearly don't concern Essendon - they could for example very easily (and responsibly) make a public statement clarifying their intentions in the actions they have taken, making suitable assurances about their views on drugs in sport - but they haven't. Their silence on the matter indicates that they don't mind being potentially seen as the ones who legally cleared the way for future drug-cheating. Government too is apparently content to do nothing about this shift in the way football (and consequently all sport) is able to be played, the result of their permitting focus to shift in this case from being about clean sport to being about procedural disputation over the right of laws to be applied to wrong-doers. Is the government, the law so powerless, so compromised? This case is a matter of serious cultural significance to Australia, to Victoria - but neither State or Federal government has stepped up in any way to protect football. Is anyone going to make this all end in a win for drug-free sport? As long as Essendon call the shots, the answer is certainly "no". So, who is going to be our (the football public's) champion? The lawyers?... Will someone stand up to the current process, oppose the takeover, and change the trajectory that Essendon currently has us all on?

we will be pushing. Roos will, and when it starts to kick in, you can be sure the players will burst their way up, with great enthusiasm, out of the past few years. It's been a while coming, but coming it is; and in my view it will take some stopping when it breaks out. So, more interesting than the when, for me, will be seeing the how. But as to next year, I am hoping to be seeing the phoenix rise, in a triumph such as we have not seen in the AFL for some time.

you call that "hope"?