Dr John Dee

That's a more than effective summary of the steps involved in any properly conducted investigation and report. The only qualification I'd offer is that there's no way the report has been sent to the MFC without Anderson and perhaps Demetriou having read at least a summary of findings (hopefully these are so threadbare that it won't have taken long to read anyway). But since, as you say, the important factor here is the ultimate decision makers, and that's the Commission itself, there's no undermining of procedural fairness in that. (sorry for digging this issue up now; I'd have posted something earlier but it got so hot here yesterday that the modem shut down).

Agree. It's broad church and we're scattered everywhere. I fully appreciate the contributions (including BH's) on threads about training days, debates about players, game day threads and so on. They're not just informative but give those of us in the provinces a sense of belonging. But if footy was the only topic everyone, including those who prefer to talk it, would probably exhaust what they've got to say soon enough.

Sue, I think you might be pushing this a bit too hard in any sense in which it arose from what I said earlier. Clothier and Haddad aren't independent, they work for the AFL. And Demetriou or Anderson or anyone else higher up the food chain could easily have got on the phone to Clothier and said 'this stuff about Watts is just stupid, get rid of it' and Clothier no doubt would have done so. But the report was always going to be issued as a report on the investigation and its findings. It's not the concluded position of the AFL and we won't know that until the MFC has done what it needs to do and the Commission weighs up the evidence. At that point the AFL can do whatever it wants to distance itself from particular findings or claims made by Clothier and Haddad, even disowning every finding the investigators have registered. As for them asking stupid questions about Watts, I'm not convinced the AFL (and particularly Anderson) would necessarily see these as stupid, rather they could just as easily be taken as covering every possibility so that there's no comeback later on about a failed or inadequate investigation. Oh, and investigators do sometimes ask dumb questions with particular reasons in mind (though I can't actually find any sense of that in the case of the questions about JW).

Sorry, I was relying on Occam's Razor. There are all sorts of scenarios that can be thought up but I doubt most of them would be likely, including this one, particularly since it relies on an obliging AFL.

They'll have reviewed it, for sure, and itemised everything they might want to rely on later on or pretend doesn't exist. But they'll have sent it as the investigators' findings since the AFL can't register any findings/issue a report of its own until the MFC has responded to the 'investigation'.

You said Finkelstein demanded that things be left in the report. He could only do that if he'd seen the report before it was a report (i.e. in some draft form).

I doubt whether RF or anyone associated with the club would have seen the report until it was a report. There's never been any suggestion that we've been given a right to comment on a report in draft form. In effect, what's been sent to the MFC is a draft ... whatever of it that's left standing later with AFL endorsement will be the final version.

Don't forget the processes involved here. The report has presumably been packaged (and should have been) as a report on the investigators' findings. The AFL can walk (or run) away from it as far and as fast as they want. But the MFC has a right to respond (as do any individuals accused of anything) before the AFL comes to any conclusions, issues charges, raises fines, dismisses the whole thing or whatever. Editing what Clothier and Haddad might have said serves no real purpose, in fact it would change their findings, no matter what those findings are. The only report that will matter is the one that issues from the Commission meeting at some stage or other. Clothier and Haddad have obviously tried to turn over every rock, pebble, and seemingly every grain of sand from 2009. That this makes them look ridiculous in terms of particular questions probably won't have occurred to them and won't affect the AFL's view of its responsibilities and position. What worries me is, with 800 or maybe 1000 pages peppered with all sorts of irrelevant issues and misreadings of on-field behaviours, when the press get hold of the report they can go on recycling little idiocies like the Watts question for years, trying to sustain a 'case' against the MFC. The AFL is really going to have to whack this potential on the head with its own findings after the MFC response ... and of course if investigators' report has nothing more substantial than the sorts of stupidities being circulated now it'll be Clothier and Haddad who become the main victims of Andrew's silver hammer.

After Fan raised this a few pages back, I cheated and let Google do some work on it. As Dirty Dees discovered, it's not easy turning up any regulations, let alone the ones you want. All I discovered was that, on another thread, Whispering Jack had asked the same question a few months ago. If WJ doesn't know I'm not sure who would. But what's most likely is that there's no regulation defining and outlawing 'draft tampering'; rather, because there are procedures for draft, anything the AFL identifies as interfering with or manipulating these they'd call tampering. They might then run into problems with direct and indirect 'tampering', intention and all the other issues that have been canvassed here, so I don't fancy their chances even on a finding that tries to step round the whole tanking question.

Nor is it just one set of 'merits', whatever they might be, but the person also has to induce or encourage someone else not to perform on his merits, whatever they might be. Good luck with that one, AFL.

I haven't trawled through the regulations for this point. Probably a useful task for those lawyers from the Love Boat. All I've seen offered so far is the 'bringing the game into disrepute' charge, which of course wouldn't require intention, just effect ... but I've said earlier is also a pretty weak possibility at the end of a six month plus investigation.

It’s not just a 'better' view to take of tanking but really the only one. The problem here is that the word doesn’t occur anywhere in the AFL’s regulations and what the AFL has to find evidence of relates to some violation or otherwise of Regulation 19 A5). It’s been quoted before, but is worth quoting again: ‘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’. ‘Tanking’ is being used by all and sundry to describe what the MFC is supposed to have done, but a lot of what the MFC is supposed to have done hasn’t got much to do with specific competitive actions on the field. I wonder whether the AFL’s report or findings or charges will even use the word or, if they do, they’re going to have to give it a meaning that links it specifically to the regulation. The regulation itself is a lawyer’s picnic, particularly because of an injudicious use of an ‘and’. But as far as it relates to what takes place on the field, because it refers to inducing or encouraging actions that might lead to a loss, what the AFL presumably needs to establish is, at some level or other, something about intention. Hence the apparent efforts to number every fumble and every interchange as if these disclose some demonic pattern and purpose. On the other hand, since it also ends with that catch-all (or hopeful catch-all) ‘for any reason whatsoever’, the regulation asserts that intention doesn’t really matter. So I’m not surprised people might be at odds about whether intention’s important or not … or, for that matter, whether ‘tanking’ has taken place or not.

Also cause earthquakes. Not expecting Cale to, mind.

Yeah, and possibly in the hope that the Club also decides to cut any 'guilty' individuals free. But this is where we've got to say 'b#%%#r off' and stick together.

I'd hazard a guess that the AFL decided it might need to target individuals the moment the Club mentioned we were getting The Fink on board. But I also assume that the Club's unlikely to step out of the way and let any individual fight whatever findings/punishment might end up being announced.

That would have to be one of those inside sauces that get a mention from time to time

Even more extraordinary: the turnaround was fully shaped within a year since they made the GF in 54. But there were some pretty classy debutants that year, which probably helped. Things might not be as easy now but we can always hope, and the echo of the father/son signing with young Jack V is one note I keep hearing.

I don't think you quite get it about words. It's not just semantics. Words affect lives, especially when they're used carelessly or as instruments of law, social categorisation and control and so on. And I don't dispute anything about the problems facing Indigenous youth (I know a lot more about these than you might guess). What I do know is that the way those problems are talked about and thought about matter. As for what I do and don't attend to in posts, we all have our different perspectives and expertises and enthusiasms, and one of the good things about a site like DL is how these can intersect and add to conversations and understandings. But you foreclosed on anything like that from you initial post so there's not much point in saying anything else.

You want to say that facts are facts, Steve. (They're not, of course, they're always open to interpretations of various sorts). I'll insist that words are words. Close is not the same and doesn't get rid of a particular problem in how you phrased things initially. But let's just say I don't take you to be a racist, I'm just a bit more concerned with the effects of words than you might be. It's a professional hazard. Satisfied? It's not really a question of whether I'm satisfied or not. Just exercising my right to question/criticise/add to any other post I read.

No you didn't. But, as you say, you're comfortable with your ignorance. There's little point in adding anything because only the world has a problem, not you.

Perhaps you should go look for her. She's not the kind of gal to fall for someone who just sits around pining. Do something. Find her. Tell her you love her. We won't mind if it takes you a year or two to track her down.

Thanks Jack, and I don’t think it matters too much whether you’ve had to fill in a few gaps. All the best stories are a mix of fact and invention anyway, and what matters here is the way you’ve told it, which is just great. I was probably at the Junction Oval that afternoon since I was carried to lots of Demons games from a pretty early age. Even though I was too young to remember anything about it, your post has some personal resonances for me. I’m not sure about simpler times. In one sense that’s true, but in another the post-WW2 currents that changed this country forever were already at work and coming to terms with these wasn’t always easy. No doubt your actor and your marine would have had other tales to tell about attitudes and social relationships at the time. On semper fidelis, the one thing I’d throw in that might have leavened the marine’s alarm is that Barassi’s debut/first full game (maybe even the whole season) had a real emotional loading to it, what with his father’s death, the work of those at the Club to look after him, the fact that he nearly wasn’t a Melbourne player at all. Expectations would have been extremely high, and not just about how well he might play, but about what his playing said of the club and its shared spirit and sense of responsibility to its own. So it was probably no surprise that things got a bit out of hand between supporters, but at a different level the Barassi story was itself a clear expression of semper fidelis. Yeah, I know, he took the Bluebaggers’ bribe much later, but the years he gave us repaid any debt several times over. I agree entirely with your assessment of RDB; the thing about him was that he wasn’t just a great player but he changed the game itself. Not many do that, no one did it in the way he did. I’m just grateful that, if I don’t actually remember the beginnings of his career, I remember something of what happened in subsequent years.

Yeah, right, 'don't blame me, I only mentioned "indigenous boys" as a group. It's everyone else who want to see this as having something to do with race.' What you refuse to accept is that you imposed a racial category in the first place and used the behaviour of a few individuals as standing for the behaviour of a group. That's straightforward stereotyping of course. I was just being a bit more euphemistic in calling it racial profiling. Actually I called it amateur-hour racial profiling to distinguish it from the real thing, which is what law enforcement agencies are said to do ... and which you also try to repeat with your 'the vast majority of violent crime ... blah blah'. Whether or not the 'vast majority' of anything is done by the members of any group doesn't make every member of that group culpable. You're pretty free with claims about the ignorance of others. Perhaps you might start to look at your own. You might be comfortable with what you've posted, but it's your problem if you're uncomfortable with the responses you get.

I can't be quite as generous, since there was no reference in McQueen's post to white players. All he did was bundle together some very different 'indiscretions' merely on the pretext that these were committed (allegedly) by 'indigenous boys'. Leave race out of it for the moment. Take 3 episodes: a footballer getting thrown out of a casino for being drunk, a footballer being found to associate with criminal types, a footballer leaving a stupid sexist message on Twitter, all during the same season . Then run an article or leave a post that says 'footballers haven't done their image any favours over the last few months'. How reasonable or logical is that? And is it in any way relevant to ask what point it makes about the 99% of people who aren't footballers? In any case, according to Fox, Bennell was trying to help break up a fight, so maybe he wasn't being as indiscreet as McQueen wants to believe.

That's pretty classy coming from someone who waded in here with amateur-hour racial profiling in the first place. And trying to anticipate criticism doesn't make that criticism invalid or unnecessary.