ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

[Greystache]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Complete nonsense

Insightful contribution.

Obviously you were entirely satisfied with the hard hitting (and completely predictable) interview?

[Eastdog]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

There is a bit of a battle going on between Stache and RM.

[Ghost Dog]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

I like this article

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/spo...7a7e615649a72f

Behind a paywall. Can you post it please? Thanks!

[Bornadog]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Complete nonsense

Tracey has been criticised by every man and his dog for a soft interview.

[Greystache]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Behind a paywall. Can you post it please? Thanks!

Take it with a grain of salt

IF the utterly disgraced former Essendon coach James Hird had lived and coached in Sydney, Brisbane or just about anywhere else, the doping saga that has brought his old club to its knees may never have happened.

The cult of AFL celebrity in Melbourne is defined by Hird. He is not just your normal everyday footy hero and coach, one like Darren Lockyer or Adam Goodes or even Jarryd Hayne.

He is almost a religious icon, a man who has spent nearly 30 years of his life inside the bubble called Melbourne, gazing at himself in the reflection, being told, and genuinely believing, that he is perfect.

There is no questioning of the super hero in Melbourne. There is no second guessing a footballer’s every move like you see in Sydney or Brisbane. There is no rough and tough reporting crew holding your every move to account.

You have no concept of the collateral damage you have caused in a three-year campaign that has brought your club, your players and your code to its knees.

Unlike any other football personality in the history of sport in Australia at the centre of a major scandal, Hird feels no pain, no guilt. All he feels through extreme, almost super human vanity, is that someone else, everybody else has to carry the can for what happened at Essendon.

It is hardly worth considering who he has blamed because not one of them should have ever been placed in the position that they were by the man who was much, much more than the head coach.

Melbourne and the football club had ensured Hird existed in a world beyond normal human frailty. He was the closest thing to perfect anyone had ever seen at Essendon. The best player they had ever seen, the greatest human being they had produced, the perfect, mouth-watering answer to finding greatness for this side through coaching it.

Over these last two days, newspaper readers have been treated to a Hird diatribe of stunning delusion and blame laying. Here in Sydney, or Brisbane, or Adelaide, the rant has raised more questions than answers. It has underlined just how conceited Hird is and how ridiculously unrepentant he remains.

James Hird was welcomed as the saviour of Essendon.
In Melbourne, it has been gobbled up by an AFL-obsessed city and fanatical club desperate to find someone else besides the golden child to blame. Even our sister newspaper in Melbourne sees the Hird words as definitive, with no need for cross examination. It is all in his own tiresome, sad words.

James Hird is the most culpable of everyone at Essendon. He decided that a 4000 needle program was a good idea. The doctor, the strength and conditioning team, the 34 players, the administration and, of course, the ‘sports scientist’ Stephen Dank are all right up there when you play the blame game. So, too, assistant coaches and pharmacists. Hird hasn’t missed any of them on his way through.

But peel back the many layers of mistakes, incompetence, deceit and pure arrogance and you find James Hird, the guru, the club’s favourite son, the man everyone trusted to deliver results.

Hird knew there were needles, he was Dank’s friend (text messages underlined how close they were) and he knew some of his playing group had questioned the program. He encouraged the hiding, he did not question ASADA once when they came for any of their multiple testing days.

Hird was so obsessed with himself that he allowed the saga to last for three years. He did not take sage advice to cop a hit. He persisted with court action even though he was told it would fail. He slowly, insistently, tragically, brought a club to its knees.

Today, he is still standing tall, writing hundreds of words in his own defence and talking to sympathetic journalists in television ‘specials’ that are woeful for their lack of accountability.

He has expressed his sadness for the ‘travesty of justice‘ handed down by the Court of Arbitration for Sport this week when in fact he is one of the main reasons the judgement went so dramatically against the players.

Nobody in Melbourne was really prepared for the decision. The club, the AFL, Hird and the players had all believed there was barely a one per cent chance of a decision like this one because they had all buried their heads in Port Phillip sand.

Hird, though, is the most incredible for his willingness to stand before us and claim innocence. He will fall on his feet somewhere when one of the acolytes hands him a new job. He will keep his name on the honour boards. That’s how Melbourne works.

In the meantime, a genuine bloke called John Worsfold is picking over the carnage of this once proud club, trying to find a way for the Bombers to claw their way back into some semblance of a football team. He must be cursing the day the Dons brought the golden boy back to the fold.

If you are James Hird, you never see yourself as a perpetrator. You are just James, the white haired boy in the bubble.

She's a rugby bogan who thinks slamming AFL at every opportunity somehow makes NRL better. It's also hard to take seriously someone questioning other people's morality when you are a multiple convicted high range drink driver yourself.

[Ghost Dog]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Take it with a grain of salt



She's a rugby bogan who thinks slamming AFL at every opportunity somehow makes NRL better. It's also hard to take seriously someone questioning other people's morality when you are a multiple convicted high range drink driver yourself.

Well, I see Collingwood players are doing their best to take the headlines back from Essendon today. Apparently you can sext to someone who is not your wife, end up in a magazine with your schlong out and it's 'not Collingwood's problem'. Class, Class.

[AndrewP6]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Or that it was Thymosin alpha 1 that Crameri saw in the fridge.

Because Dank was running such a legitimate operation? I'd bet my last dollar it was TB4. Dank wasn't a practising doctor, or pharmacist, he'd have no reason to have TA1.

[Twodogs]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

I lost it at "a genuine bloke called John Worsfold"

[jeemak]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Jesus Christ, that Wilson article is atrocious.

How can people be like that and receive compensation for their "services"?

[Twodogs]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Jesus Christ, that Wilson article is atrocious.

How can people be like that and receive compensation for their "services"?

They marry Roy Masters.

[Ghost Dog]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

Jesus Christ, that Wilson article is atrocious.

How can people be like that and receive compensation for their "services"?

The whole of Melbourne does not idolize him.

[jeemak]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

They marry Roy Masters.

John Hartigan perhaps?

Marrying Roy Masters would do different things to you I reckon.

[Bornadog]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

The Doctor should have done more?

Good Article here

[jeemak]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

You must have higher expectations expectations of ABC than I do in that case. It was stock standard ABC routine, bring on a guest, stack the panel with people only interested in one side of the story, and don't ask any questions that might return an answer you don't want to here.

I'd expect they were pretty happy with how it played out.

Yes, I must.

I appreciate it's fashionable to criticise the ABC for its lack of impartiality or otherwise - especially if you're not slightly left leaning or a centralist - though if you can find me any options on FTA that present opinions with the balance the ABC does I'd be happy to hear of them.

Holmes' interview was crap, but it wasn't in any way representative of the standard or best work the ABC produces.

[jeemak]

Re: ASADA issues show-cause notices to Essendon players

The Doctor should have done more?

Good Article here

I honestly don't see how Team Hird/Holmes could have expected anything other than this type of questioning.

The duplicity of Hird, stating Reid is his mate, and then pushing him under the bus is tantamount to how he's made such a dick of himself.

Remember, the moment the EFC issue was raised Hird accepted full responsibility over the matter - acknowledging it happened on his watch and under his guidance.

It beggars belief anyone could forget that.