I remember this. And Dank also said that there was detailed notes attached behind the consent forms in regards to the specifics of the substances
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Not if you know you’re stuff, but in the main, you are correct.
I wouldn’t call them ‘IT Specialists’ though - those guys would just undelete the data.
he gets no praise from me he probably did hide the invoice in the mistaken belief it was banned or under order from his mate to have no evidence that could clear us …however I do think all our documents were in order the ones they said they didn’t find were never in existence in the first place …we didn’t adhere to afl governance but they failed to ensure we did follow governance, so they cant belt us when they didn’t bother policing their own rules. In fact they didn’t bother to check any club was practicing good governance …Evans knows all that he knows we had to be scapegoated & he knows we should never have made anything public because under the ASADA rules if they were going to investigate us off the back of the ACC report no one should have known about it …personally I think they were going to investigate the entire AFL & NRL competitions & to save a total mess happening both competitions scapegoated a club …that was connected with Dank who never faced any charges from that report anyway !!!
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we didn’t need to self report on a tv broadcast either that is just more proof of an afl set up
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We only have McDevitt’s view that the standard of proof hovers somewhere between 51-99% of more than mere probability. Even if so, CAS arbitrators in other cases not involving positive tests ( most recently the Russian cases) have required hard factual evidence - to satisfy them that the complainant has discharged its burden of proof sufficient to raise a presumption that the standard has been met.
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I’m an IT guy, but this sounds bullshit to me.
Edit. Also, if I apply that logic to anything else in life it just doesn’t stack up. Eg fired from job, fine from police, anything at all.
Wasn’t it in his interview with Tracy Holmes?
Good point Al- Dank could have bought his AOD9604 from a dodgy overseas supplier.
Supplier gives him a dodgy invoice billed to his ageing clinic but shipped to Windy Hill.
Dank bills the club for supplements and may or may not list AOD9604 with an ageing clinic invoice. Hamilton has authority to pay the invoice, takes it up to accounts payable and Dank gets his money. Accounts files the invoice for record keeping.
They don’t scan it,
Someone gets tipped off about Essendon and AOD9604 being in the headlights and heads down to Windy Hill.
Gets access to Danks office, and the files in accounts looking for anything to do with AOD9604. Spends the whole weekend there, knows what he’s looking for and finds it.
Investigation gets underway and nobody can find the AOD9604 invoices.
Dank doesn’t have them, he left them at Windy Hill.
He refuses to give evidence, won’t incriminate himself because of his dodgy dealings.
Dubious persons have an interest or are involved in his ageing clinic.
Talk of bikie gangs, and even Mick Gatto.
Dank gets shot at.
Super Ninja auditors are left floundering.
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Who knows what the Board knew or who was calling the shots at Essendon. Could have been that it was left to the AFL.
According to a report by Sam Lane of 6 September 2013 ( sourced from Amendola) Lukin approached Hird before the Freo game - at the instigation of Robson- suggesting that he stand down.
Also, on the day of the game , Vlad made his statement that it was an option for Hird to consider.
It has been such a dirty business, officials were strategically divided from the outset, only the players remained united
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The timing is interesting BA. From the tip-off to Evans through to the ‘Blackest Day’ Press conference in Feb 2013 (and for some weeks & months after) the AFL were convinced our players took PEDs and that ASADA would find proof. Their conviction was based on the ACC report and ASADA’s work prior to this in 2012, and their realisation that Dank was dodgy.
Hence they felt a deal was required to ‘save the players’. They had to sacrifice something. Evans agreed as the players’ careers (and the need to field a competitive unit) was considered the top priority. At this point there was no doubt the AFL believed the management of the HPD was poor and we should be whacked for governance failings. Bringing the game into disrepute is an easy catch all clause for them to apply as they see fit. There is no effective control over their abuse of their power to wield this stick.
As ASADA started to get their teeth into the evidence over the next 3-6 months - and we know Clothier had a copy of all joint investigation data/evidence - the ducks weren’t really lining up. The AOD case had fallen over; the AFL never believed the TB4 claims - Dillon said the evidence was weak - so the AFL had to go ballistic on the governance angle as there was no evidence of PED use.
I think some on here are equating ‘no evidence’ with ‘stuff was stolen’. But there was no convincing evidence because we never took PEDs. The extensive ASADA investigation supports this. There was only one outstanding issue which was what kind of thymosin was used. As J34 have demonstrated, the evidence that the thymosin was thymomodulin does exist. It’s not extensive because our record keeping was poor and we have admitted this many times and confirmed by Madden that we actually have reconstructed most of what happened, except we didn’t keep records of quantities administered of each supplement.
Clearly there was no motivation or capacity to steal the thymosin invoices in Feb 2013. Even if I stole them, it would be so easy for Dank or the accounting clerk to say - hey we bought thymomodulin from Supplier XYZ so phone them and ask for a copy of the invoice. But Dank has not disclosed this. This missing piece of information and the shonky record keeping is on him.
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As to the weighting to be accorded to journalists reporting involving direct quotations, the AFL tribunal and CAS accorded different weighting to McKenzie’s interview with Dank.
In a current defamation case brought by the Wagner family against Alan Jones and a print media journalist from the Australian, the Wagner barrister attacked that journalist for selective quoting to fit the narrative. He conceded that he had not included reporting obtained from one of the interviewees who had witnessed the flood first hand.
Comparable to evidence which is manipulated to leave out the bits.
In the CAS Russian cases, the arbitrators discounted the evidence in the McLaren “independent” WADA/IOC report as being based on the opinion of the informant, without testing whether the informant was basing his opinion on what he had actually witnessed .
Comparable to puffing up the evidence without a factual context like inflammatory references ”to thousands of injections”
Tainted evidence on all counts.
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Two things:
Firstly; Where does Madden day we have reconstructed most of what has happened?
Secondly; The accounting clerk would only have an invoice from Dank’s ageing clinic with no details of the supplements purchased. Getting an invoice from a dodgy overseas supplier just doesn’t happen.
That’s a very naive proposition when it comes to the dealings of Dank.
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This comes back to my earlier point about what records we did or didn’t have & Evans giving up ownership of them. If the belief is that we did in fact give the players “thousands” of injections then there has to be thousands of records of injections or the purchase of injectables capable of being injected thousands of times. If we have such records then why haven’t they been made public to clarify exactly the true figures. Again public perception is that we gave the players thousands of injections so the truth can’t be worse. Most likely , in my belief, we have records of hundreds of injections that actually equate to far less than 100 injections per player BUT again proof of these records never fitted the AFL’s narrative of poor governance. Even if we only used the figures from Hypermed (again a registered medical facility that is required to keep records of all treatments administered under their licence) then it would give us a clearer picture of how many injections the players actually received. Now unless the truth is actually tens of thousands then how can the truth be worse??? Evans & the board had to have a far more accurate account of the total injections than simply “thousands” but again chose to not defend the club on any front.
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Yeah, but even if we have records/invoices, how would anyone know whether what was on the invoice was actually correct? For example in Chip’s book it says:
The only record within the Como Compounding Pharmacy of a second shipment arriving from Shanghai was a handwritten note entered in a diary by Alavi’s lab assistant, Vania Giordani, for 18 February 2012. Charter had no involvement in this shipment. According to what Alavi told ASADA, the shipment was arranged by Anthony, Charter’s Shanghai-based associate. Alavi’s belief is that the peptides came from the same source as the initial batch but he doesn’t know. He tells Walker that the peptides, like the first batch, arrived without any documentation. (Le Grand, Chip. The Straight Dope: The inside story of sport’s biggest drug scandal, Kindle Locations 4304-4307. Melbourne University Publishing. Kindle Edition.)
All the info is so flimsy that only Dank (and maybe Charter) really knows which Thymosin it actually was. Dank has repeatedly told the media that it was Thymomodulin but hasn’t actually turned up to prove that to any court or tribunal.
1 Like
Ok, lets break the evidence down a bit…
Files?
There was apparently a file (possibly, a simple white folder?) which contained all of Danks records which he left at the club. This seems to make sense, as I would think administrators at EFC would be reluctant to give Dank access to the EFC network given he appeared at the club intermittently.
That said, I cant see Dank systematically ticking a box in a paper list of players after a player was given something, can you? Perhaps that was Robinsons job - did they check his laptop? I think Robinson is the key here. Anyway, we cannot be sure what was actually in the Dank file. Nonetheless, Danks file went missing.
What was given?
In its Interim Report ASADA created a table titled ‘Admitted use of Substances by Players’
• 8 players admitted being administered AODA9604 injections
• 12 players admitted!being!administered AODA9604 cream
• 21 players admitted being administered Cerebrolysin injections
• 15 players admitted being administered Colostrum tablets
• 7 players admitted being using Comfrey paste
• 21 players admitted being administered LactAAway
• 4 players admitted being!administered Lube All Plus
• 15 players admitted being administered Melanotan
• 6 players admitted being administered Melatonin
• 1 player admitted being administered PRP and Interleukin
• 6 players admitted being administered Thymosin
• 4 players admitted being administered Traumeel injections
• 32 players admitted being administered Tribulus tablets
• 35 players admitted being administered a wide arrange of other substances
• 38 players admitted having Vitamin B & C drips
There must have been some records of all the above substances, as it all cant have been prescribed by Dank could it? One would think there must be records of the vitamin drips and some of the creams?
So, the next question is:
- Who at the club orders all these substances. Dank - yes. Robinson - possibly? Hamilton -?
- Exactly what substances can be substantiated by records, invoices, purchase orders? The claim there were no records of any of these substances at the club needs some clarification.
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Call me Dave
A man walks down Napier street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
Phone-trigger Phone-trigger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly Beerbelly
Get these mutts away from me
You know I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore
Andrew be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost brave
I can call you Fatty
And Fatty when you call me
You can call me Dave
A man walks down Napier street
He says why am I short of attention
Got a short little span of attention
And wo my nights are so long
What of my corporate family
What if I die here
Who’ll be the role-model
When James the role-model is
Gone Gone
He’ll stick up for his pallys
With some roly-poly lying Cypriot churl
All along along
He’ll hide incidents and accidents
Causing hints and allegations
Andrew be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost brave
I can call you Fatty
And Fatty when you call me
You can call me Dave
Call me Dave
A man walks down Napier street
It’s a street in an arranged world
Maybe it’ll be the Hird World
Maybe it’s his first time to ground
He doesn’t speak the language
He holds no courtesy
He is a fortune hunting man
He is surrounded by the ground
Windy Hill ground
Cattle in the marketplace
Chaterrings and subordinates
He looks around, around
He sees dangers in the infrastructure
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!
Andrew be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost brave
I can call you Fatty
And Fatty when you call me
You can call me Dave
Call me Dave
Apologies Paul Simon
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I still find it very hard to believe Dank wouldn’t keep records at least for himself. The golden fleece for all sports scientists worldwide is a program thats legal & has defined quantifyable benefits to the athletes. This intellectual property could potentially be worth millions to any phys-eder who happens to find the right mix. Without records how could Dank ever hope to prove & then sell his results?
IF lets just say we went on with it in 2012, didn’t get injuries after injuries & set a standard for physical fitness & recovery then Dank’s reputation would go through the roof & to every professional sport his program would be valuable. Without a record of which players responded to which programs there is no intellectual property. Its just not the way science is done & regardless of what you may think of Dank he was qualified in the field & had worked at the highest level in this country for a decade. I just don’t think its likely you get that far without having some level of scientific discipline.
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… University of Sydney Associate Dean, Ian Spence, backed his student Dank - the central character in the Essendon drug furore - as a straight shooter with considerable academic talent.
"Academically he is good, knows his stuff but had a lot going on,’’ said Spence, referring to Dank’s work with NRL and AFL clubs.
"He really knows a lot about sports physiology, has got his head around all of that.’’
Spence’s assessment contrasts with the portrayal of a man allegedly injecting as yet undetermined substances into Essendon players before leaving the club last December.
…
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I think everyone finds it hard that Dank promised to come forward with evidence to clear the players but never has.
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There was never really a proper format for him to actually give credible evidence (other than his ACC interview) & as others have pointed out, its very likely he was “persuaded” to not reveal the truth or possibly realised it might incriminate himself. Self interest ruled the day with every party except our accused. Evans & the board acted to protect themselves foremost as did the AFL of course. Weapon looked after his interests spectacularly. I’d love to know exactly where Dank is at professionally & financially because on the surface it should have ruined him but did he ultimately get the hush money I believe he was seeking?
I remember very early on in the saga stating here that the club needed to get Dank & Robinson firmly in our camp & on our side as they were always going to be the key players in proving innocence or at least getting the truth. Again we allowed the AFL to drive a wedge with Robinson which was ultimately used against us & Dank was never, on the surface anyways, treated as anything but an enemy by the club.
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