because the seasons pretty ■■■■. just a boring as fk season so far.
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says the man who single handily stop the North Melbourne football club from becoming a powerhouse Qld/vic club …like his opinion means anything ??
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I have always known it was wrong, but I haven’t fully realised the profundity of it before; Evans sacrificing Hird was the action that sent the club to this current rudderless “what do we stand for” moment.
It was effectively the hand grenade that destroyed the continuity of our identity, leaving us in a position where we need to reinvent Essendon with only tenuous links to the culture of the past.
Hird and Thompson should be, as our Premiership Captains, the shining icons of 1993 and 2000. Instead we have the shameful ruins of the peaks of our past 25 years to show for it.
Melbourne Storm had a similar challenge (not identical by any means) but they hung tough with their coach and players, with the board going down fighting for them, and look where they are now.
If we had an Eddy rather than a David in 2013, the present wouldn’t be the shambles it is.
We know Buckley would have been stood up for, with his back covered by Eddy.
So it should have been with Hird.
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And until that is dealt with, we will be a shambles. Becasue as the coach said the other day we dont know what our trademark is. i.e we have no idea what we stand for.
We know its not loyalty.
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Its not honesty either.
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mike fitzpatrick can suck a ■■■■.
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My thoughts exactly. Closely followed by Mike Fitzpatrick is a turd.
Edit: Swear filter??
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Just came here to say that Mike Fitzpatrick is a wanker, and if this doesn’t show that they had it in for us without actually wanting to know the truth, this is it.
In an explosive interview to be aired on Fox Footy’s Open Mike, Fitzpatrick reveals he was told by a rival player that the Bombers had presented that season as though “they had done five pre-seasons in one”.
“And I think that kind of summed it up,” Fitzpatrick said.
If this ■■■■■■■■ acted on a comment like that from another player then he can stick it up his ■■■■.
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If he has said that in an open forum then can he be sued for slander? Wouldn’t this statement actually help JT’s case?
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The AFAIL have been on the attack with all their hounds recently. JB defending Evans, Eddie et all on Saturday and now this prick. Something must be really giving them the ■■■■■.
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What I was getting at, they can’t have it both ways.
Can’t be seen to be doing backroom deals, and when the players were found guilty, then not being shown to be trying to pervert the course of justice.
Football administrators shouldn’t be trying to sweep any of this under the rug. But hey, it’s the AFL, what you gonna do?
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Someone who wasn’t there told him something, therefore it must be true
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And this guy was literally a Rhodes Scholar!
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Now, if the AFL testimony to CAS were to emerge, would it show whether the AFL supported the players ( its employees) or WADA/ASADA? I do recall Jeff cult of Hird Gleeson referring to the players as dumb country kids ( or words to that effect). If nothing else, the AFL was using the CAS avenue to justify its own treatment of Hird and co.
The CAS arbitrators said that they only included in their report what was necessary to their decision. So, although Hird was never charged by ASADA with any doping offence, the inference was that Hird led the players into using prohibited drugs - notwithstanding the facts to the contrary.
There may be a few rattled at what Hird may say next, including about Evans’ dealings with the AFL - would not be a good look if the AFL were to take him on under the no disparagement arrangement if his comments were purely factual.
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So was Tony Abbott.
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Can someone post the Fitzpatrick article?
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To restore the balance, so was Bob Hawke.
Mike Fitzpatrick declares Essendon supplements ‘almost certainly performance enhancing’
MICHAEL WARNER, Herald Sun
May 14, 2018 7:00pm
Subscriber only
RETIRED AFL commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick has poured fuel on Essendon’s flatlining season by declaring the substances used by the club in 2012 were “almost certainly performance enhancing”.
In an explosive interview to be aired on Fox Footy’s Open Mike, Fitzpatrick reveals he was told by a rival player that the Bombers had presented that season as though “they had done five pre-seasons in one”.
“And I think that kind of summed it up,” Fitzpatrick said.
On the status of the injections administered by Essendon, he said: “They either didn’t know what was in it, or if they did know, they weren’t going to say. There was circumstantial evidence as to what it was.
“My point of view was that it was almost certainly performance enhancing, but even if it wasn’t … the penalty in the end that the AFL put on Essendon was to do with duty of care and the general behaviour towards the players.
“You couldn’t be totally certain (that it was performance enhancing).”
Former AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou and commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick. Picture: Michael Klein
Tipped by some experts to win this year’s premiership, Essendon has slumped to 15th on the AFL ladder after a calamitous 14-point loss to Carlton at the MCG on Saturday.
The form crisis triggered a war of words between Bombers legend Kevin Sheedy and favourite son Matthew Lloyd after Lloyd declared Essendon was no longer a “great” club.
“He is a lovely guy, Matthew, but never coached really, never been involved seriously in a football club from a point of view of developing a club,” Sheedy said.
“His job is media now, and he has got to make outlandish statements like that, and good luck to him.”
But it is the comments from Fitzpatrick that will most anger factions at Essendon that remain outraged by the AFL’s handling of the game’s greatest crisis.
Asked if the AFL would have done anything differently with the benefit of hindsight, Fitzpatrick told interviewer Mike Sheahan: “Fundamentally not, I don’t think. It was a disappointing part of footy. It shouldn’t have happened, duty of care, you know, player welfare, just … something happened at Essendon that shouldn’t have happened.
Former Essendon CEO Ian Robson, chairman David Evans and coach James Hird.
“We essentially found out about it pretty much when everybody else did, which was well after that season.
“And so we spent a lot of time finding out very quickly what had happened … and it wasn’t a pretty sight.”
In reference to the role played by Essendon chairman David Evans over the first six months of the drugs crisis, Fitzpatrick said: “I would have thought, and I think initially, the club basically was very cooperative but that changed and I think it became an unfortunate battle.”
He said Bombers players had been administered “thousands of injections … with substances which apparently they weren’t too sure what they were”.
The Essendon 34, including six players still at the club and another five now at different clubs, were initially cleared of doping by an AFL anti-doping tribunal before the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the verdict on January 2016.
Coaching great Mick Malthouse last month declared Essendon was still scarred by the scandal which handed “life sentences” to the suspended players.
But Essendon chairman Lindsay Tanner said on Saturday that relations been the AFL and club chiefs had dramatically improved since the height of the drugs crisis.
Tanner said he had chosen not to attend a recent gathering of disgruntled Melbourne-based club presidents, arranged by Hawks boss Jeff Kennett, because the Bombers had “no complaints” about the league’s administration of the game.
“Whatever unhappiness anybody in the Essendon fraternity may have had about the AFL in that period, they should be absolutely 100 per cent supportive of the AFL in the last couple of years because they have done the right thing by the club when we’ve been in deep trouble,” he told 3AW
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Seriously, Tanner GTFO!
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Thanks