Fantastic moment in EFC history. Hopefully more to come when that ■■■■■■■■ is again called to account.
1 Like
Yes and no. Police have been tampering with evidence since time immemorial. So long as they believe a person to be guilty they seem to have been able to justify it to themselves.
3 Likes
I would have thought Bombers “truth”would have referred to what happened on the weekend prior to the report, when Evans & Vlad? went through everything they could at the club, after which there seemed to be no documentation of any program.
2 Likes
Maybe because angry fans start to turn that anger towards the club, AFL etc looking for answers to the downturn in form. Happy fans don’t ask questions.
Fans haven’t been happy since the saga started. Wins and losses have nothing to do with it !
2 Likes
Yep
attendances are down across the board - they need our money
it also distracts from the off field stuff
Extract from Evans resignation announcement in July 2013 after the Dawks game. Could be an acknowledgement that he was found out?
Also, going by the last para quoted here, is he saying he accepts personal responsibility for the stuff up?
“My involvement and indeed my family’s involvement over many years at both Essendon and the AFL have given me great strength during the last 5 months, because many of the people I deal with are great friends
This has given me great insight and assisted in making tough decisions.
But those decisions may now be seen to be clouded by those relationships or as a conflict and I am not prepared to have my decisions reflect poorly on the club either now or in future.”
4 Likes
Concrete boots.
Not Gerry Gee,he never shut the hell up until Ron Blaskett the puppeteer did.
1 Like
Too ■■■■■■ late David.
1 Like
Friends shouldn’t be assisting in making tough decisions when they have a vested interest in the decision.
1 Like
Made it clear that “great friends” come before ordinary friends like Hird.
2 Likes
Agreed. I’m dealing with a fellow director at work at the moment who seems unable to divest herself of this belief - that as long as we’re all friends everything will be ok. It’s such a basic tenet of good governance that it astounds me Evans would think it’s ok to make reference to such conflicts and even laud them.
3 Likes
Exactly
Haha I suppose that’s as good a way asany to throw your mates under the bus.
In exercising his voting powers as CEO and refusing to stand aside, Demetriou made it clear that conflict of interest ( in the plain meaning of that term) does not apply to the AFL.
Ron Evans had to be strongly persuaded to stand aside from contracts when he was Mr Spotless. Could not understand why he should not pursue his personal business interests
2 Likes
Yes its called a conflict of interest for that very reason. David might have thought he was above it but he was wrong. He was also played by an expert, who was smarter, more calculating, ruthless and in over his head. Perhaps by the time he realised it was too late. The damage was done the way out was via the back door. The choices he made from that point were all about survival, both professionally and financially.
We know you spent a weekend at the club going looking for evidence because you said so.
Who else was there with you David? Its too big a job for one person. And what was found?
What was done with whatever was found? Who was involved?
6 Likes
Article by Lou Sweeney in the Rage ( not behind paywall) about Essendon “ It takes a long time to mend a broken heart” quoting Heppell at the time of his suspension referring to injustice and feeling of being let down by the club.
3 Likes
Essendon: It takes a long time to mend a broken heart
By Lou Sweeney19 May 2018 — 11:00pm
Football is a hard thing. Violent on the body. Consuming of the mind. Brutal on the
dark night of the soul.
Around about two years ago, a civvy-wearing footballer, blissfully free of the sponsor-laden fashion horror that is the team polo shirt, made his regular weekly appearance
on AFL 360.
Dyson Heppell, somewhere mid doping suspension, was asked this question: “Are
you angry with the football club?”
He sat for an agonising few seconds, probably thinking of treading the company line,
until he realised he wasn’t, at that moment, part of the company.
“I do feel angry,” he said. “I feel let down and probably an overwhelming sense of
injustice towards the club.”
Anyone who has had their life stomped all over by the heavy, blind boots of
circumstance or bad luck or blind faith will tell you, it takes a long time to mend a
broken heart.
Two short years later, he leads that very same club he feels let him down.
In the interim, he has seen his beloved former captain worn bone weary by the unforgiving
light of scrutiny, fair or not - Jobe Watson’s Brownlow taken and handed to others. His team, his friends, his coach, himself, labelled and lashed.
This isn’t a cry of injustice for them, but a context.
The young men of the Essendon football club have had so much more to worry about than skin folds and their trials have been, not of timing around The Tan, but of weightier, more existential concerns.
In September 2017, I took my son to the SCG to watch Essendon play the Swans in the elimination final. We thought we might not see Jobe in an Essendon jumper again, and we wanted to be there to watch our gallant champ lest it was goodbye.
Safe to say the best part of the trip was when we took to the water in one of those jet boat things that whirls about the Heads and gets you thoroughly soaked as it skips across the famous harbour.
We trudged back to our hotel, changed into dry clothes and walked to the ground.
Joe Daniher rose to the clouds, marked and goaled within the first few minutes. This, I thought, is what true football joy is. Within minutes it was dust.
It has been thus, save for a quarter or two of inspiration, since.
And it has made me wonder why. Time, and junior football has conspired in not allowing us to see our beloved Bombers in the flesh more than twice this year.
Once that glorious last quarter in the first round against Adelaide, once, the hapless Keystone Cop-ery against Hawthorn – round and round and round they went until they all fell over. It wasn’t football they were playing, it seemed a desperate, almost sad and friendless thing.
It was then, when I saw them there in front of me that I knew. Perhaps the heart can only take so much. The body is strong, it trains and stands and bounces up again.
Even the mind can reset, re-program and tell itself to go again. But you cannot fool
the heart. It knows everything.
When Essendon became whole again in 2017 it was a thing to behold, a power and an energy that became at times a little otherworldly. It was always going to happen after the horror of the years gone before. We all walked through the comeback year a little on air. There were times it was purely transcendent.
When I think back to that Sydney final now, I can see all of the writing now hard and sharp and black on the wall of 2018 was always there. There is talent and skill and effort and care. But it takes a long time to mend a broken heart. It takes patience and time.
Lou Sweeney is an Age columnist.
10 Likes
Norwegian Government WADA Foundation Board member call for an independent assessment of WADA gets shot down by sporting federation members gets called “divisive and disrespectful “.
No record of the position of Australian Government member. But don’t hold your breath on the outcome of the Government inquiry into sports integrity - probably provide more money to chase down those cheating athletes, sports federations filled to the brim with integrity ( like FIFA and IAAF)
6 Likes