If they expect anyone to believe that, well...they're dumb as rocks.
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Smith is perfectly allowed to visit his partner - our esteemed leader in Victoria did initially try to remove that basic civil liberty from all of us but quickly changed his tune when the deserved backlash came his way.
Smith driving Hunter to Gowers is not essential travel, which is where Smith let himself down with his poor judgement. It is also against the law as others have alluded to, which he should have known.
If anyone believes that, I hope you are on my eventual jury.
Smith should probably get a ticket for 'non essential travel' like thousands of other Victorians. That's just black and white.
Hunter will do his licence, and face other traffic charges as well as NET. And cost a bit when insurance won't cover the damages. That to me is black and white.
The only live issue is what the club do about it? Are we the type of club that looks away when leaders break various laws, or are we a club that sees our response to this as a serious culture issue?
No. This has been tried and lost at court a lot, but they could try. They can try it out as a defence, they're smarter to plead guilty and run a sob story from an otherwise impeccable person.
Eg. A drunk man runs down a family of three, all dead. He flees the scene. Then argues hours later, "I was sober, drove home to ring the police but had a quick drink of a 5th of Vodka to calm myself down and wouldn't you know it, you police just turned up as I was dialling. So I might be over the limit now, but I was sober then. It's not culpable driving."
Yeh, nah. It's equally plausible he didn't continue to drink and his alcohol reading is vastly lower than at the time of the accident. He knew he had a vehicle accident should've stayed to give an accurate breath sample.
Tyson Stengle of Adelaide has been charged, after blowing .125 and driving an unregistered vehicle. That’ll give people something else to talk about (and journo Tom Browne a second chance at composing a Tweet that isn’t ridiculous)
Josh Bruce and his girlfriend went up to NSW before the shutdown. This spoken about openly over a month ago by Josh either on the bulldogs website or SEN or something like that. But I saw him talk about it - and it is completely fine that he went there before lockdown and has stayed there.
Thinking about it more broadly, I wonder if there's a cost already for the club, beyond culture.
I assume the club message about memberships might be an 'ask' of members to sacrifice this year's dues because of Coronavirus. Some members (most on here) will go 'yes' if our households can cover it. While others might look at the fact that we might need to sacrifice our dues for the club, while our Vice Captain couldn't sacrifice one night of badly drink driving into 4 cars while also breaching Coronavirus restrictions and making a kid, Bailey Smith, be an accessory after the fact. Who I'd give a suspended $5,000 fine to. I have no doubt he'd trigger it ever again. Other players might think twice if it happened again.
It's a horrible story to get around and the message is hard to get around as the club will sell us the need to sacrifice for the betterment of the club. I'm not for sacking him. I'm for the maximum fine allowable. I'm for him having to make a public Mea culpa and taking to Sons of The West programs assuming they continue. I'm for stripping the Vice Captaincy and leadership group spot. I'm for putting in a fan favourite and strong leader in behind Bonts. Bonts worst ever game in Round 1 as new Captain with this before Round 2 isn't good. Maybe Macrae, Crozier or Wallis. Say Macrae for argument sake. We need to do it before the tot sets in.
Then we can turn the strategic messaging to members maybe thinking 'Hunter didn't sacrifice for club, why should I?', into, (Macrae saying) 'Lachie made a mistake and he's paid for it and I don't want to talk about that it. He's a good man and clubman who made a mistake. I'm really excited that I have now a chance to stand with Bonts as Captain and Vice Captain and stand up when the Western Bulldogs players and club needed me to. It's a true honour to stand up for this great club and I hope every member or potential member in these tough times stands up with me to keep our club strong.' New photo of both men in the jumpers sent to email database and members for the rest of the year.
But we need to spin it soon.
Edit: Maybe a kick in the backside might focus Lachie into raising his game to the next level. Not all bad for him.
I don't mind the club taking their time and getting absolutely all the information before making a final statement and judgement on penalties. Eddie went off half-cocked in the Heath Shaw-Alan Didak incident, which then blew up in his face when the full story came out.
Then I hope he has changed his licence, car rego and electoral registration to the NSW location.
Or he is lucky avoiding the NSW cops. Legislation here - does not matter if you arrived in our rum colony beforehand.
https://gazette.legislation.nsw.gov....20_2020-65.pdf
BTW, just for the record, I don't give a stuff where Bruce is