If the MSM reporting is correct, Harris appears to be casting Fitzpatrick’s comments to Corcoran about Hird as “opinion”.
Yet, earlier, an AFL spokesperson was reported as saying “ that part of the conversation did not take place.”
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The players were never tried and therefore found guilty or innocent of anything in an Australian court.
AFL/EFC contracts
AFL tribunal
CAS
Swiss law
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The AFL tribunal was held in Australia and held to Australian Law of Innocent until proven guilty.
The judges were practicing under the ethical frameworks of the Australian magistrate.
And as I understand, the decision carried across all sporting codes, not just AFL.
Not exactly, no.
But we’d go around in circles on this I suspect, so I’ll drop it.
Thank you to everyone for the explanations & updates. Huge hats off to J T. Here’s hoping we can have some uncovering of some of the truth at last.
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Thank You
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Records of meetings of Commissioners and Club Presidents could be revealing on the timing at which they were consulted and involved in decision-making on sanctions against staff and competing in the finals.
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You know what they say. If your gonna lie, you need to have a good memory.
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I think the spokesperson was actually reported as being a spokeswoman-wonder who that woman was.
Certainly the allegations are serious and go to the very heart of how the AFL do business. We have seen so many examples of the poor governance that has spread like a disease through Docklands. It is not challenged because the AFL IS a juggernaut.
It is worthy of note that on Fox 360 earlier in the week Robbo asked Gil about the rumours sweeping the footy public about his private life. Gil denied the rumours (as he would). Can’t tell me that Goyder and the Commission are not aware of these rumours as well. It would be fair to say that Robbo knows the full story and probably a few others in the media. Again it shows the power (bully-boy) of the AFL in this town.
Then again Goyder would be justified in cleaning house ahead of his ongoing reign as Chairman of the AFL Commission. He would not want to tarred with the stench of the Fitzpatrick, Demetriou, McLachlan era.
Let’s all hope that Burnside has convinced Dixon that disclosure is the best option to get to the root cause of the problem.
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A couple of things.
There have been many secrets swept under the carpet, not just at afl house. Every club has them.
Secondly, what rumours!!!
IMO, the AFL and ASADA are still protecting Robinson. He is the key in this saga. Consider how much attention he has got, and he was the central figure in all of this. Read the lead up and the article again, and given how central Robinson is to the whole saga, he gets virtually no attention at all. He is still be protected by AFL and ASADA, given cushy jobs by the AFL and ASADA refusing to investigate the Bock drug taking episode, but why?
He knows something.
20 Aug 2013 Wilson demands Hirds head for bad governance
21 Aug 2013 AFL released its interim charge sheet
22 Aug 2013 "Sarah’ on Triple M with Eddie McGuire
24 Aug 2013 Pauli Little denies EFC deserves penatities from drug cheating but hints of a deal
27 Aug Gill and Fitzpatrick announce the fate of the EFC and its officials; the club doctor’s hearing was to be held over until 29/08/13 Suspensions.
30 Aug 2013 Chip releases the following article:
Note the highlighted sections:
Evidence omitted from ASADA report on Dons
CHIP LE GRANDTheAustralian12:00AM August 31, 2013
THE Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority report into the Essendon supplements program that triggered unprecedented sanctions against the club omitted key evidence about a violent altercation between then club high-performance manager Dean Robinson and James Hird and documents and photographs supporting Essendon’s claims that its players were administered with a legal immunity booster instead of a banned substance.
ASADA’s investigators were provided testimony by Hird, corroborated by members of Robinson’s support staff, about an incident that occurred at the club in February last year, when Robinson flew into a rage over a disagreement about how best to run a training session.
When Hird insisted Robinson change the training session, Robinson punched a hole in the wall.
Hird told ASADA that from that point on, he and Robinson had a strained relationship – a relationship further damaged in September last year when the club, through Hird’s mentor Danny Corcoran, suggested to Robinson that he should seek employment elsewhere.
Had the case against Essendon and Hird been resolved in open hearing rather than backroom negotiations at AFL House, Robinson’s motives in seeking to portray Hird as a driving force behind the supplements program would have been keenly scrutinised.
Instead, some of the AFL’s most damaging allegations against Essendon and Hird, built on the testimony of Robinson, convicted drug trafficker Shane Charter and deregistered chiropractor Malcolm Hooper, remain unsubstantiated, unproven and on the public record.
The AFL, as part of its publicly released, 34-page statement of grounds against Essendon, accused the club of administering its players with Thymosin Beta 4, a peptide hormone banned by the World Anti Doping Agency.
Essendon’s position is that its players were not given Thymosin Beta 4 and that when players consented on February 8 to be administered with Thymosin, this was shorthand for Thymodulin, an immunity booster safely given to babies.
The statement of grounds included circumstantial evidence showing that sports scientist Stephen Dank, at the time he was working with Essendon, discussed with Charter details about the supply, preparation and use of Thymosin Beta 4, which Dank legally obtained through the Como Compounding Pharmacy, and that both men referred to the substance as Thymosin. The AFL charge sheet said investigators found “no record of Como Compounding Pharmacy having supplied the club with Thymodulin”.
"To date, no other supplier of Thymosin to Essendon Football Club has been identified," the AFL found.
The AFL did not include Thymodulin on a list of substances it suspected of being given to Essendon players in the 2012 season.
The Weekend Australian can reveal ASADA was provided with evidence showing that about half of Essendon’s playing group were administered with Thymodulin over a four-month period.
A spreadsheet retrieved by the club from Dank’s computer log-in at Windy Hill shows a schedule of Thymodulin injections given to Essendon players over 16 weeks. The spread sheet is titled “2012 THYMODULIN”.
The club also tendered to ASADA a photograph taken by one of its officials showing a bottle of a substance administered to players by Dank. In the photograph, Thymodulin is clearly labelled on the bottle.
The Weekend Australian understands that contrary to the AFL charge sheet, Essendon was supplied Thymodulin by the Como Compounding Pharmacy in the Melbourne suburb of Toorak. The owner of the pharmacy, Nima Alavi, declined to provide testimony or make his company records available to ASADA.
ASADA’s 400-page interim report relied on by AFL general counsel Andrew Dillon to lay charges against Essendon and its officials is understood to make no mention of Robinson’s altercation with Hird or the Thymodulin spread sheet and photograph.
Robinson’s lawyer, David Galbally QC, said yesterday he was unable to contact his client for a response.
Following two days of negotiations at AFL House that resulted in Essendon pleading guilty to conduct unbecoming and prejudicial to the AFL, the AFL withdrew its allegation that Essendon administered its players with any banned substances, including Thymosin Beta 4.
Instead, Essendon and the AFL agreed that its players could have been administered with a banned substance and that the club was unable to determine whether this had happened. The charges against Hird, Corcoran and assistant coach Mark Thompson were dropped in return for the three officials agreeing to penalties for their part in failing to properly manage the supplements program and protect the health of players. Essendon was dumped from this year’s finals, stripped of draft picks and fined $2 million. In accepting a 12-month ban from coaching, Hird agreed he “did not take sufficient steps to avoid there being a risk that players may have been administered substances that were prohibited”.
As late as 6 o’clock on the night of the settlement, Hird was determined to continue his Supreme Court fight against the AFL, firm in his belief that his testimony to the joint ASADA-AFL investigation had been twisted by investigators and leaked to the media and that most of the allegations against him were wrong. It is understood he reluctantly agreed to accept the AFL’s sanction once it became clear his club was intent on resolving the bitter dispute.
"Sometimes the good of the game and the good of the football club and the good of the players comes ahead of the principles, the fight," he told team supporters.
Club doctor Bruce Reid refused to agree to a penalty and will petition the Victorian Supreme Court on Monday to force the AFL to appoint an independent person to hear the case against him. Hird’s testimony to ASADA differed sharply with the AFL statement of grounds about the “warning” he received in August 2011 about the use of peptides and his knowledge of whether they were being used at the club.
During a marathon, nine-hour interview, Hird told ASADA investigator John Nolan, a former investigator with Victoria Police and the Office of Police Integrity, the state’s disbanded police watchdog, that he first learned a peptide was being given to Essendon players in January last year, when Reid wrote a letter expressing his concern about AOD-9604 being administered to players as part of Dank’s supplements program.
Before then, Dank and Robinson had referred to AOD-9604 only as an amino acid, as supported by text messages between Dank and Robinson obtained by ASADA. The case against Hird begins on August 5, 2011, when, according to the AFL statement of grounds, Hird, Corcoran and former football manager Paul Hamilton are called to a meeting with an ASADA representative and AFL integrity manager Brett Clothier and warned that peptides are a “serious risk to the integrity of the AFL” and in the same category of doping substances as steroids and Human Growth Hormone.
Hird told ASADA the meeting came about after he casually asked an ASADA testing officer during an Essendon training session whether he had heard anything about AFL clubs using “peptypes”. In his testimony, Hird does not recall being warned off the use of all peptides by either the AFL or ASADA. His recollection was that Clothier told him some peptides were banned and others were not. The status of AOD-9604 remains a fiercely contested issue in the Essendon supplements scandal and a central argument in the ongoing case against Reid. Although the substance was declared banned by WADA in April, ASADA’s lead investigator Paul Simonsson in May told the club’s solicitor Tony Hargreaves and anti-doping consultant Andrew Garnham he did not believe the substance was banned in 2012 and prosecution on the basis of AOD-9604 would be problematic.
The only doping allegation Essendon could not answer is whether its players may have been administered with a banned substance at the HyperMed Clinic in Prahran between April and August. Hird told ASADA that he, Corcoran, Hamilton and Reid agreed only to players receiving hyperbaric treatment at the clinic, which was owned by Hooper.
Hird told ASADA that he inspected the clinic with Robinson shortly after the Anzac Day match and witnessed three players receiving hyperbaric treatments and did not see any players being given injections. He said he knew nothing about injections at the clinic until May, when a player complained to Reid about being sore from his treatment. He said he told Dank to stop all injections.
The first Hird knew of players being given a mystery medication from Mexico was on April 16 this year during his testimony to ASADA, when he was told as much by Nolan.
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If Taylor’s case is breach of trade (or whatever it is called) then surely he will win.
Tim Watson knew what the penalty was way before the 2 day kangaroo court. He said it on the radio.
And the details of the kangaroo court are well known and published.
We know the afl sold tickets or packages full well knowing that Essendon wouldn’t be in the finals.
Let me run the case. It would be over in 5 mins.
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Lol who’s ol’Boiled egg eyes ?
Gill. Seen the smarmy prick walking around the city a few times. His eyeballs are the size of boiled eggs.
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“Sometimes the good of the game and the good of the football club and the good of the players comes ahead of the principles, the fight,” he told team supporters.
I hope the truth comes out and a good man gets to tell his story.
#standbyhird
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He knows he was actually in charge of the supplements program not Hird
He knows there was nothing untoward which would have meant that ASADA didn’t get a scalp and AFL’s deal to serve up EFC on a platter to ensure other clubs not targeted would fall over. A scalp ASADA desperate for due to government pressure.
Also if they try to go after Robinson then he spills beans on knowing that he was doing much the same - albeit not injections unless advising slyly on the side as per Bock - at AFL run GC (with kids) and triple premiership Cats.
And league poster boy GAJ jnr worked with Robinson the entire time including winning brownlows.
Even if no doping occurred. Tainted flags. Tainted brownlows. Tainted GC club that struggling for relevancy as is, and all falls back on AFL as they had no checks in place for supplement programs (& an integrity officer asleep at wheel) or employees.
Robinson needs to be put on the stand
— below from an article SWSNBS 01/09/2012
If his practices & methods didn’t suit their list why was he allowed to move on to EFC without any effort by the AFL to also protect EFC players.
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Thats why…simples ! Injecting teenagers with undocumented substances in an AFL run club…imagine the outrage, AFL House cleaned out etc etc. EFC, well Mike hates them, so let distract all the gullible morons, do in EFC for the xtra bonus points from Mike thinks Gil. Mike jumps onboard after all the Blues will get a finals berth…what could go wrong !
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Carlton not the only Fitzpatrick conflict of interest. What about the scheduling of games at that NSW stadium where he owned half the lease?
Learnt his craft from Mr Spotless Ron Evans
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And as an added bonus lets take out hird at the same time who dominates a commercial space we have aspirations for.
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