Dear Damian
I thought the AFL and the 2013 Essendon board were really struggling when they employed Elizabeth (T H) Lukin as their mouth piece. But your comments on Dead Set Legends on Triple M last week were really bottom of the birdcage stuff. It was bad enough the AFL contributing to James Hird’s destruction when he was well, but your Triple M attack when he is still very mentally fragile is beyond the pale.
You knew, or should have known, as a writer for the AFL, you would be seen as doing the dirty work for the AFL. Surely, you have some sense of decency and will draw the line somewhere!
Item (Barrett) 1: Former Essendon coach James Hird is out of care, but is reportedly losing contact with some of his friends and football colleagues, according to Triple M’s Damian Barrett.
My Comment:
James has been mentally sick for over two years. Dropping out of society is a well-known response to mental illness. James has been so sick for such a long time he hasn’t even been able to talk to, or email, people who wanted to expose AFL and ASADA corruption.
Item (Barrett) 2: “Where he is physically - he’s out of the care that he is receiving, he’s been out now for probably three weeks,” he told Triple M.
My Comment:
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This sentence is impossible to dissect because it appears to have been spoken by a two-year-old. “He is out of care” is past tense. “That he is receiving” is present tense. Which is it? Is James still receiving care or not? And how would you know?
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No wonder you were rolled by a very average Mark Robinson for the head football writer job at the Herald Sun. Mind you, second prize wasn’t too bad. Sycophancy is more admired at the AFL than the Herald Sun. And you get to write for head office while Robinson only writes for the branch office.
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Mental illnesses are not cleared up in weeks and James is receiving extensive care, and I assume will continue to do so for the foreseeable future – particularly, if he had the misfortune to read your grubby article.
Item (Barrett) 3: "He’s become very withdrawn…people who have known him for a very long time and who are friends of him have been regularly saying, even recently, that the responses to their messaging of him is just non-existent from James.
My Comment: -
“Friends of him.” You probably lost the job to Ole Yellar because the Herald Sun couldn’t afford to employ your own sub-editor.
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Apparently, Justin Quill and Robert Thomson were friends of James’s. With friends, such as that, you don’t need any enemies. They stood back and did nothing about News Limited trashing his reputation without just cause.
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What a great friend Chris Heffernan turned out. He knew Hird was on a different branch of the Essendon organisation structure, and he knew James’s job description, and as a board member he must have known his responsibilities under the Victorian OH&S Act, yet he was happy for him to take the blame for the AFL Commission and Essendon board’s monumental failures.
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And James’s ex-player friends, and Essendon coterie friends, apparently have been happy to let the sycophantic Essendon board off-the-hook. They have stood back and accepted the board’s decision to move on rather than fight the injustice to the 34 players and James. So much for the Essendon family Lindsay Tanner and Xavier Campbell wax lyrical about. If my family thought that I was the victim of corruption and injustice, I am sure that my siblings, Aunts, Uncles and cousins would mortgage their homes to fight for me.
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As I said above, not wanting to talk to anyone is a symptom of his mental illness.
Item (Barrett) 4: "I feel that they are saying until James chooses to want to respond to them and to want to get himself back into the AFL, should he choose to do that, then nothing’s going to happen on that front. -
You must have done your apprenticeship under Caroline Wilson and Patrick Smith. Like you, neither of those vultures, quote sources. A decent journalist would have asked his sources what they felt. You are guessing what you think unknown people are saying.
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You are implying that James is normal and doesn’t want to respond. He is mentally sick you idiot and is not thinking clearly. That is not by choice. Your attempt to denigrate James are just a cheap shot by a grub.
Item (Barrett) 5: “I think we’re often ill-equipped to deal with (incidents like this), because clearly what happened to him in the early parts of this year when he had that medical incident - which was a serious one for him to be cared for at the highest levels of medical profession - we’re in an area where we don’t really understand as outsiders.”
My Comment:
You are ill-equipped to write about football, let alone write or speak about mental illness. You should have shut up and left us wondering whether you were an idiot. Instead, presumably, in attempting to ingratiate yourself with the AFL, you spoke up and confirmed it.
Item (Barrett) 6: Barrett said the door was open for a return to Essendon - or football - in some capacity, though it would be coming from a long way back. “No one’s stopping him from going back to Essendon or going back to the game,” he said.
My Comment:
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I can’t speak for James, but I have been told that he is extremely grateful and humble about the magnificent support from the vast majority of Essendon members and supporters. But I’d be amazed if he went back while members of the 2012 – 2016 boards are still involved.
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The 2013 board conspired with the AFL, ASADA and the Gillard government to hold him responsible for the governance issues at Essendon. Why would James have anything to do with those people?
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The current board was given irrefutable proof that the AFL, ASADA, WADA and the CAS panel were corrupt, but chose not to do anything with the information. Why would James have anything to do with those people?
Item (Barrett) 7: He suggested Hird could take responsibility for his role in the Essendon saga, as a means of helping him recuperate and enter his next stage of life. “In terms of where he is in footy, I still feel that he needs to take more responsibility for what he did.”
My Comment: -
News Flash! You don’t decide whether James was responsible for the governance problems at Essendon. The AFL doesn’t decide. The media doesn’t decide. James’s legal responsibilities for governance at Essendon are determined by the Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Act (2004); the tripartite employment contract between the AFL/Essendon board and each player; the Essendon organisation structure, James’s job description; and the job descriptions of the members of the football department.
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Any idiot could deduce that as joint employers, the AFL and the Essendon board, legally had the most responsibility for providing a safe workplace for the players. Legally, about 32 people at the AFL and Essendon had more responsibility than James. For your edification, on 2 February 2012, Essendon general manager football operations Paul Hamilton sent an email to staff which said everything to do with the supplement program had to come across his desk. As James wasn’t even a member of the football department, I would have thought that after the AFL Commissioners, senior AFL staff, and the Essendon board, Hamilton was most responsible for the governance issues at Essendon. As it transpired, Hamilton got the goldmine (a job with the AFL) and Hird got the shaft. But worse still, when he is ill he has had to put up with grubby little people such as yourself and the judge’s wife, hanging around picking at the carcass like vultures.
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As you are so close to the AFL, perhaps you can do me a favour and explain why the AFL allowed the players to take, what the AFL believed were life-threatening banned substances for 12 months without warning the players they may die. Writing in the Age, 2 July 2014, John Pierik said: “Chief AFL medical officer Peter Harcourt has revealed suspicions of Essendon’s illegal use of peptides and supplements was so strong that players were tested by ASADA in 2012, and fears some players could eventually suffer from ‘hormonal issues or cancers’.” To their utter shame, not a single journalist has raised this unconscionable behaviour by the AFL. I don’t know anything about the law, but I assume that if a player had died, the DPP could have laid charges against AFL executives along the lines of ‘contributing to manslaughter’.
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For your edification, this is what happened
i. The AFL decided before 5 February 2013, that James would be held responsible
ii. On 9 February 2013, four days before the investigation started, Gill McLachlan received agreement from ASADA, the Gillard government and the Essendon board, to penalise Essendon; exonerate the AFL and Essendon board; breach the WADA Code by exonerating the players on the spurious grounds of a no fault clause; and to hold individual staff accountable. Individuals, quickly became code for finding Hird responsible.
iii. During a telephone hook-up on 11 April 2013, the Commissioners decided Hird had to be stood down by either the Essendon board or the AFL. Hird wasn’t even interviewed until 16 April 2013. So much for procedural fairness.
iv. Although the AFL Commissioners were to hear the evidence if charges were to be laid in August, they were told of the guilty verdict and penalties in June 2013.
v. James was bullied by the AFL into taking a 12-month break from coaching
Item (Barrett) 8: “Until he gets his head around what happened there nothing’s going to happen of any positive nature from a footy perspective.”
My Comment:
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Were you speaking in your capacity as Hird’s psychiatrist, or CEO of the AFL or President of Essendon or the lily-livered executive at SEN who withdrew the job offer to Hird?
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Damian, I suggest that if you wish to recover any respectability in the media world, you write a column about James Hird’s responsibilities. Naturally, the column will include the relevant clauses from the Victorian OH&S Act; the relevant clauses from the AFL/Essendon/Player employment contract; the Essendon organisation structure; James Hird’s job description; and Paul Hamilton’s job description. If you are not prepared to write such an article, I suggest you just shut up.
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While you are researching the AFL, Essendon board and Hird’s responsibilities, you should ask McLachlan why the AFL breached clauses 2.6.2, 2.7 and 2.8 of the WADA Code in 2010. Those clauses indicate that as Stephen Dank had used a banned WADA substance on a member of the public, he should have been banned from working with a WADA/AFL affiliated athlete. The AFL not only breached the WADA code by registering him to work in the AFL, it employed him at the AFL owned Gold Coast Suns.
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If the AFL had fulfilled its obligations in 2010, Dank would not have even be available to work at Essendon.
Incidentally, during your appearance on Triple M, did you or Triple M declare that you write for the AFL?
Bruce Francis
