A “ten years on” article by Michael Gleeson. Nothing new, so far as I can see.
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Anyone able to post the article
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Saw the new posts so had to have a gander.
Not the same without bigallan.
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Yay, 10 year anniversary
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in
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AFL 2026: Inside the room with the Essendon Bombers 34 players, including Jobe Watson and Dyson Heppell, when the sledgehammer came down over the drugs saga
Michael GleesonJanuary 11, 2026
The Essendon 34 were suspended 10 years ago.Marija Ercegovac
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Jobe Watson walked out of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in November 2015 and knew what was coming wasn’t going to be good. He just didn’t know yet what bad meant.
Watson had gone to Sydney to give evidence in person before the CAS hearing into the Essendon Football Club’s 2012 supplements regime.
That night, Essendon chief executive Xavier Campbell called Watson to ask how his evidence had gone.
“Yeah, it was a very interesting experience,” Watson told Campbell. “But we’re f—ed.”
“What? What do you mean?” Campbell asked.
“I’m telling you, I can read a room. And we’re f—ed.”
“You can’t say that. How would you possibly know?”
“Xavier, I’m telling you.”
For Watson, it was the vibe. He sensed from the tone of the questioning and the tribunal’s demeanour that the sentiment was against Essendon. Going into the hearings he’d felt optimistic because the Essendon players had, in March 2015, been cleared by the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal.
Former Essendon captain Jobe Watson now works in property. Domain
Watson sat through the next day or two of hearings in Sydney before returning to Melbourne and getting back into pre-season training, then breaking for Christmas.
On January 11, 2016, while the players were training at Tullamarine, word came through that the CAS had made its decision. It would be handed down the next day.
“I told a couple of players after the hearings that I thought we were in trouble, but you have no idea what, ‘This doesn’t look good for us’ means because it was unprecedented, and you’re not exposed to what a punishment might look like,” Watson said.
“I distinctly remember leaving the club the day before we were finding out the results on a Tuesday morning – which was the Monday afternoon in Switzerland – and I remember packing my bags and leaving, walking out of the club thinking, ‘I have no idea if I’m coming back here or not’.”
Essendon players, including Dyson Heppell (foreground), train on January 11, 2016, the day before their suspensions were announced.Pat Scala
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
The players
Amid the many important moments in the Essendon saga, this day must be regarded as one of the most significant in Australian sport. Never before had a team been wiped out through a lengthy suspension. A group of 34 players – they would come to be known as “the Essendon 34” , and 12 of them were still at the club at the time – were banned for the entire 2016 season. Ten years later, it remains one of the most dramatic days in Australian sport. Some say the Bombers are still to recover. Certainly, it informs much of the club’s on-field difficulties over the past decade.
Early on the morning of January 12, Michael Hibberd and Jake Melksham picked Watson up at his bayside house and the trio drove in silence to the Novotel in St Kilda. They made their way to the basement conference rooms where other players were gathering along with lawyer Tony Hargreaves, AFL Players Association CEO Paul Marsh and general counsel Brett Murphy.
Nearly a year earlier, on March 31, 2015, when the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal decision was handed down, the affected players also met away from the club, at the Pullman Hotel.
The Essendon 34 front the media at the Pullman Hotel on March 31, 2015, the day the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal delivered a “not guilty” finding. Getty Images
“The lawyers left the room and it was just silent,” Watson recalled. “We were just sitting there as a group waiting for them to come back. There’s so much tension and nervous energy there that no one spoke. No one was chatting, which is rare for a football group. There’s no jovial feel about the room at all, it was just dead silent.
“Then [Brett] Murphy and Tony Hargreaves, the lawyer, walked in and when they opened the door they were looking at the ground, and we were like, ‘Oh this is not good’. But still, at that point, you’re thinking, ‘What is not good? What does that mean?’
“You are not really even thinking about length of time of suspension or anything like that. I wasn’t thinking, ‘OK, not good equates to six months’. I was probably more like ‘not good’ is being found guilty.
“Then they deliver what ‘not good’ actually equates to. Everyone was trying to comprehend – what does this actually look and feel like? You hear the initial results, and then you’re not really tuned in because you are sort of hit by what those initial results are.
“Later you get a sense of what these details actually equate to but, in the moment, you just get hit by the sledgehammer. I just recall there were a lot of, like, vacant looks on people’s faces, and just a lot of fear. You know when you see fear on people. That’s what I recall most, it was just shock.”
A few players started to cry quietly, others sat staring blankly. The first to move was Dyson Heppell. Only a month earlier, he had been named vice captain of the club under Watson – now he was one of the banned players.
The Age’s front page on January 13, 2016.The Age
“The thing that stood out to me the most was because 34 blokes were getting this news, you don’t look at them all at once, but Dyson Heppell got up and walked around and started hugging every player,” Marsh remembered.
“There were a lot of grown men crying in the room, and that was the moment I just thought, ‘Geez, that is selfless leadership’. I’ll never forget Dyson doing that. He’s one of the youngest players in the room and I just think he saw his mates in complete devastation.”
The players milled around for a short time asking similar questions again and again, trying to get their heads around the news and what it meant. What could they do? Could they still go to games? Could they go to their kids’ footy? There was still a lot of grey area, Watson said. Eventually, they left the Novotel and went to David Myers’ place for breakfast, though no one felt much like eating.
“We were originally going to go back to my place, but then we knew there’d be media waiting outside my place, so it didn’t make sense to be there,” Watson said.
“It was shock for a period of time because it was just this rug got pulled out from under you. You’ve been cleared by one tribunal, you’ve done the bulk of training to get ready for a season, and then it just goes and evaporates in a moment.
“It’s difficult to be in the mindset of, ‘OK, well, what are the consequences of this’ when it’s such a big change to what your habits are overnight. It was made very clear straight away there was [to be] no communication [with the club].”
Watson was not shocked by the result, given his sense walking out of the CAS hearing, but that didn’t diminish his frustration.
“I felt like the evidence that was presented – and I read through every day of the first hearing of the AFL tribunal, you know – seemed to feel that there was no way that you could say that this person had this [substance] then, and there was no testing that produced any form of guilt in terms of positive tests,” he said.
“So it was very hard to say that this is when it [Thymosin Beta-4 or TB4] arrived, and this person had this then, and we can say for sure that that occurred. That was just not there, that evidence didn’t exist, and so I felt confident going into the CAS hearing.
“They [the World Anti-Doping Agency] could never identify who had what and when and so they just clumped us all together into one bag and said, ‘You’re all guilty’.”
Nonetheless, this line of defence – that WADA couldn’t be certain what the players took because the players themselves didn’t know and there were no records – was always going to be problematic. The WADA code operates under a strict liability that an athlete is responsible for what goes into their body.
Furthermore, WADA had argued it was incriminating, not just coincidental, that no player listed the injections, either TB-4 or any variation on thymosin, in their drug declaration forms when they were drug tested. Some players listed Panadol, but none mentioned the injections. WADA, and ultimately the CAS, felt this militated against the idea the players were sure the product they took was legal.
“Initially, I guess the results hit everyone the same, and it just filled you with uncertainty,” Watson said.
“I remember thinking, ‘Let’s just try and get through today and see what tomorrow looks like’. And it was like that for the first two weeks of it; just get through a day because all your planning has gone out the window.”
The AFL
Like the players, the AFL executive had arrived early at their headquarters at Etihad Stadium, as it was then known. They gathered in Gillon McLachlan’s office by 7am. Simon Lethlean, who was then head of broadcasting and fixturing, and Andrew Dillon, then the league’s general counsel, were with McLachlan, along with communications director Liz Lukin and Brett Clothier, who headed integrity (he left the AFL a year later to run the Athletes Integrity Unit for World Athletics, headquartered in Monaco).
Then-AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan and then-chairman Mike Fitzpatrick on the day the bans came down.Eddie Jim
A guilty finding was not unexpected. Half a team missing a season was.
When the email dropped, and Dillon read it out, the mood in the room was at once angry and pragmatic. There was frustration and anger with the position Essendon had put their players in, and the impact on the wider competition. On the pragmatic side, the reality quickly set in that the decision represented a real threat to the season and, by extension, the code, if it endangered broadcasting and stadium deals. Of the 34 players banned, 12 were still Essendon players, five more were playing at other clubs and the remainder had retired or been delisted.
Without a dozen players, Essendon could not comfortably field a team for the year and the consequences and logistics of that were immediately front of mind. Where would top-up players be sourced from? What happened to the salary cap? What about the rules around short-term contracts and impacts on second-tier competition contracts? A team, any team, would satisfy the broadcast contract, as opposed to pleasing the broadcaster.
The pragmatic approach was predicated on an underlying acceptance, reinforced in the meeting, that this was the first and most important message to be conveyed in AFL executive’s public response, that these were details that would be worked through. They came a distant second to concerns for the health of the players involved. Put aside the fact the CAS decided a substance the players took, or were given, was performance-enhancing. Even without that, at the heart of Essendon’s defence was the unseemly fact that their players had been injected with substances and that no one could – or would – confidently identify who got what and when.
The health concerns were real. So, too, was the anger this caused at very senior levels of the AFL. The fact the club did not fully grasp its culpability in this and responded by fighting through myriad legal challenges, including an ultimately futile Federal Court appeal, mystified, frustrated and angered some on the AFL executive and commission. While the Bombers said they were seeking to protect the players’ innocence, some commissioners felt it only served as a second betrayal.
The club
For the second time, Xavier Campbell picked up the phone to an expletive that succinctly informed him of what was to come.
“You’re f—ed.”
Campbell had arrived at “the Hangar”, Essendon’s Tullamarine headquarters, early on January 12, 2016. Campbell, new club chairman Lindsay Tanner and the rest of the board gathered in the boardroom. Board member Paul Brasher (who went on to succeed Tanner in 2020) and former chair Paul Little, whose tenure had spanned years of the supplements saga that made them intimately involved in the case, were also there.
Xavier Campbell, Essendon’s then chief executive, at club headquarters on January 12, 2016. Darrian Traynor
Campbell’s phone went off. He left the boardroom to take the call.
“Mate, you are f—ed,” said the voice on the other end. It was a well-connected person whom Campbell declines to identify.
“It’s the worst of the worst-case scenarios. You are f—ed.”
Says Campbell: “I was sitting by myself in the office with the door closed, and it was just this overwhelming feeling. I reckon I sat there for five or six minutes by myself. I mean, we had done scenario planning, but this was, this was at the far right of any scenario plan we had thought about.
“I called Lindsay into my office and told him the news, and Lindsay (a former federal cabinet minister not unfamiliar with grave conversations) was as good a person as you could have during a period like that because he was incredibly calm and very pragmatic.
Then-Essendon president Lindsay Tanner.Getty Images
“We spoke about what we would need to do, that even though we had scenario planned, now that it was about to be real, and it was really bad, it was a different matter. We agreed to wait for the official decision to tell the rest of the board.”
When the news came, it came with a ding. An email dropped in Campbell’s inbox and he and Tanner read it first. A two-year ban, while backdated, still meant a season out of the game for the players. Campbell and Tanner walked into the boardroom and told the board.
“There was a degree of shell shock,” Tanner said.
“But to the great credit of the board members involved, everybody pretty quickly amped into, ‘We’ve got stuff to do here. We’ve got to work out how we’re going to publicly respond’.”
‘Suddenly it was just survival’
Downstairs at “the Hangar”, the remnants of the Essendon players not facing doping charges had gathered with John Worsfold, who was appointed senior coach in October 2015, and the other coaches and fitness staff. With so many players missing there were nearly as many staffers as players.
Campbell and the head of HR, Lisa Lawry, along with Tanner, walked down to deliver the news.
“We’re down 12 players on our list … The rest of them were looking at each other [saying], ‘What are we training for?’”
John Worsfold, Essendon’s then coach, recalls the aftermath of the players’ suspensions
These were the so-called “unaffected players”. They were utterly affected.
“That was a very hard discussion because clearly there was an impact on the affected players, of course the impact on them and their families was the most significant. But what happened here was that it became very real that you’ve just lost this whole group of teammates,” Campbell said.
“John had come in as someone [who] was going to lead a team out of it and make football fun again, and suddenly it was just survival.”
John Worsfold, Essendon’s then coach, speaks to the media in the days after the players were suspended.Wayne Taylor
Worsfold hadn’t countenanced a suspension of this magnitude. He’d been drawn to Essendon after watching the drained faces of Watson and others during the year, thinking these players should be enjoying the greatest years of their life. Football was supposed to be fun, and they looked like hell. He assumed that having been successful in the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal, a guilty finding at CAS would, at worst, bring a modest suspension. He was wrong.
“When it happened, we had to communicate to the playing group basically, ‘This has happened, we will work out how we’re going to deal with it, but we need to support you guys and help you understand what’s happened, and we will get through this’,” Worsfold said.
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“Sheeds [Kevin Sheedy] was around at the club and I asked him if he’d come down and address the players as well because of his standing at the footy club. Lindsay also spoke to the players.”
Some of the non-suspended players joined Watson and the 34 at Myers’ house. “[There was] a bit of mourning or grief, [and] just to get together and try and understand what’s happening,” Worsfold said.
Then the coach got down to business. “Around what does it mean for us? Now we’re down 12 players on our list … The rest of them were looking at each other [saying], ‘What are we training for? We don’t even know if we’re going to be able to play in the season’. We were trying to reassure them that we’ll still be fielding a team. The season is going to go ahead.”
Come back on Monday for part two, where he explains, 10 years since he and his teammates were banned, how deeply painful it was to have to give his Brownlow Medal back, but how he has moved on from it.
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Seriously, the AFaiL can GFd!
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And this is really the crux of it. They were suspended on a vibe (or really to get the result that they needed).
Nobody could prove that TB4 evere came into the country, let alone get to Essendon and the main reason that players (that were actually tested, most weren’t) didn’t list their injections was probably that they didn’t have any injections in the preceding seven days and that section was voluntary in any case.
Watson was right, the WADA reps only came over to go through the charade of a trial, not to determine guilt as they already decided that. Look at any previous tribunal and if they couldn’t prove what an athlete took or tested for then there was no possibility of a guilty verdict.
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Yep, I read exactly those lines and literally yelled FARK YOU!
You did a survey in which at least 12 clubs admitted to pharmacological experimentation AND poor governance (and at least one of the remaining clubs – Melbourne – lied to you) and then decided to isolate a club whose tests showed unusually low amounts of TB4.
■■■■ off you ■■■■■.
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Geeeez this will forever get us riled.
CAS thought the players were aware they were getting PEDs because they didn’t list thymosin on their drug testing forms ie they were deliberately cheating.
We’ve already covered why they would do this, so won’t repeat that, but I think this goes further than the general view from footy fans who hate us. The ones I talk to still blame Hird and Bomber…Bomber mainly because of his subsequent problems.
But it’s obvious those in football don’t buy this deliberately cheating idea. There’s no way the pies would employ an ex Essendon player as assistant coach if they thought there was even a remote chance he deliberately drug cheated.
We aren’t alone in knowing the players didn’t cheat. Unfortunately nobody has yet extracted the truth from dank.
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The 10 years on retrospective was always just going to repeat the AFL party line. Too many of the scumbags are still in positions of power. Dillon, Wilson, Barrett are still in footy, Gordon and Auld are hanging around prominently, even Dangerfield is still comfortably ensconced at the AFLPA after cheerfully hanging a chunk of his constituency out to dry.
But as ewok says, everyone in footy knows it was bullshit. Everyone knows that back then the record keeping was generally shambolic and that EFC just copped the spiky end of the pineapple when for various different reasons the AFL, the federal government, ASADA, and CAS all needed a scapegoat. GWS would’t have employed Hird if they’d believed the charge, or Carlton Stanton, neither would the media have given screen time to Jobe or Fletch etc.
I said at the time it’d take a generation. 20-25 years probably, when everyone directly involved in the ratbastardry is safely retired or dead and can’t retaliate any more. Then there’ll be a general acknowledgement that oh yeah, it was an open secret, that was all a bit embarrassing, bit of a shame wasn’t it, pity it’s too late to do anything about it, blah blah blah.
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Still makes my blood boil. I’m nowhere near involved in the club beyond 10 years of membership as post-saga support, but it’s had a bigger impact on my mental health than I care to admit.
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TLCR.. Couldn’t
Can the boys ultimately take massive legal action!?
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Yeah, I certainly dropped back my involvement with footy and the club around that time. Footy had become something I got angry about, rather than enjoyed, it was time for me to spend more time on other things for the good of my own mental health and relationships. Plus, it was hard to keep fighting the good fight when the club themselves didn’t really bother, and it became harder and harder to care about a sport which was being blatantly rigged in front of everyone’s face, to the loud applause of the footy media.
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They eould have been bought off and signed NDAs. We don’t know how much they were paid for that, but my guess is not enough for the eternal shame they have “inherited”
NLM was the one who was reported to have mounted a legal case against them but I suppose that has also fizzled out.
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Same here. The AwFL and their associated cronies do not get a cent from me any more.
My only connection to what was once the best game in the world is via the excellent community on Blitz.
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Second part of this story on Saga I in today’s Age. Worth reading if someone can post in full, I tried but no computer at present so cannot cut and it in total.
However this comment from Lindsay Tanner says a great deal
“The point I have made countless times to members was, yes, there are various aspects of this whole saga that I think were completely outrageous and unfair, but never forget that if we had run the club correctly, none of them would be happening.”
None of those like Tanner who ran the club, suffered the consequences the players did, especially Jobe.
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Here’s the link to part 2:
And full text:
How Jobe Watson found peace, and why he believes the drugs saga still weighs on Essendon
JANUARY 12, 2026
Jobe Watson on the night he won the Brownlow Medal in 2012. He had to hand back the award in 2016.CREDIT: PAUL ROVERE
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When the decision from the Court of Arbitration for Sport came down, Jobe Watson wasn’t thinking of his Brownlow Medal. Others were. It had been a significant conversation in scenario planning at the AFL and a question long mulled over at Essendon.
With a decision wiping out the 2016 season for the active players among the Essendon 34 – a dozen of them still on the Bombers’ list at the time – it was understandable the captain was more concerned with his then-teammates and past players.
In the immediate aftermath of one of the most significant days in Australian sport, the individual consequences were overwhelmed by the team impact.
“The Brownlow was probably more a question as the year went on, where it started to become more front-of-mind for me, I guess, when the realisation of what that might look like, and what the consequences of the result were, became clearer. But it wasn’t something I thought about immediately,” Watson said.
“It was like a wound that was festering, you know. You get to a point where you accept that you can’t play for 12 months and that’s the reality of your situation. And so you can dwell and mope about that, or you can move forward.
Watson on Brownlow night in 2012. CREDIT: PAUL ROVERE
“But the Brownlow was a part of that, that was this wound that wouldn’t heal, that was still infected, and it was just sort of getting more and more infected as the year went on. That was how it felt.
“It was something that was still there and no one really had any clear picture of what it would look like, and that wasn’t communicated to me until the end of the year, really, and so that just felt like something that was festering.”
The Brownlow Medal, the Essendon captaincy and the Watson family name meant Jobe carried much of the focus of the suspension.
Being forced to hand back a Brownlow for the doping offence was an additional punishment of sorts.
Watson during his time in New York.CREDIT: DOMAIN
Ten years on from the day the 34 players were suspended – January 12, 2016 – Watson is now at peace with what happened. Since his retirement in 2017, he has lived, and started a cafe business, in New York, where he met his wife, Virginia, and is now managing director of Watson Property Advisors in Melbourne. He has stayed connected with football as a special comments pundit on Channel Seven.
But with three primary school-aged children, he admits he has wondered how he will discuss what happened once they are old enough to understand.
“It’s an interesting question and something that I have thought about occasionally. At the moment I don’t think they actually believe that I played,” he said.
“But I think that I’ll just explain to them that, sometimes, there’s things out of your control and all you can do is deal with the scenario that you’re faced with. I’ll say that I don’t believe I did anything wrong, I don’t believe that I cheated the system, but other people found that we did. I don’t think that that is an unreasonable position to be in.
“You can believe that you didn’t do something wrong when someone else finds that you have. But you can dwell on that and that can be the story of your life, or you can move on from it.
“There’ll be times, and I think that I’ll say this to my kids, when people do things to you that you think are unfair, or you don’t think are right, and you can carry that for the rest of your life and have it be the way in which you approach all things in life, and it’ll dictate how you live the rest of your life, or you can accept it and move on.
“It takes time, but time heals everything, you know.”
Watson with his daughter and the horse he part-owns, Annavisto, at Flemington in 2023. Tom Bellchambers and Cale Hooker are also part-owners.CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
Five years ago, Watson said, a conversation about the Brownlow would be raw.
“It was deeply painful to have to give the Brownlow back,” Watson said. “But, you know, it’s life – you can move on from it. It was just an award.
“I often get asked, ‘How do you feel about it?’ And I say, ‘Look, I have incredible memories about the experiences of winning the Brownlow Medal’. I got to celebrate it with my mum and dad at the event. I had all my family and friends come afterwards and celebrate it with me. I had a week of celebrations with all my friends. They still talk about it now. And for me, the whole experience of winning the medal is one of joy and recognition of the effort and the work that was put in. Now there’s parts of it that were painful afterwards, but the experience of it at the time, I still look on it fondly.”
Another regular question is why the players did not challenge the sport science staff when they were getting injections in the stomach in the office of a sports scientist.
In the players’ eyes, there was no reason to resist. They believed club leaders from the coach and football manager to the club doctor knew players were being injected, and they were assured there was nothing untoward.
As then-CEO Ian Robson said in announcing his resignation: “We let down our players and their families … There is no excuse in not knowing [what happened] and as CEO, I am accountable.”
The CAS found that explanation understandable but unsatisfying, given that none of the players had listed injections of thymosin on declaration forms during drug testing.
Watson’s current attitude to the entire process is different to what it was. For a long time, it was too raw to discuss in detail. Now he is more phlegmatic, not wishing to have it define the remainder of his life as it marked his playing career.
“Now I look back at it and there’s still disappointment and frustration about the whole scenario, and what it did to players’ careers, what it did to my career, what it did to the environment that we had created. And I think that that is something that is just part of the experience. It’s not something that I dwell on,” he said.
“The frustration of what was allowed to take place while we were at the club, and then the consequences of that, and the way in which those consequences played out, and the length of those consequences, and what that meant for players’ careers, and the length of time that it took to play out.
“I guess I still hold to the evidence. I don’t think that I’m ignorant or naive to the evidence, either, because I absorbed it all and was participating in it to a degree with providing evidence, but also actively reading and collecting the evidence through transcripts. So I think that there’s still a level of frustration about what was put forward, and then the consequences of that evidence and the judgment that was found.
“I think that the consequences, and this is true in life, all facets of life, is that whatever happens to you is felt more by the people around you than it is by you. And that’s with everything – illness, tragedy, anything like that. And it’s the same for us, and it’s the same for my parents. It’s the same for family members. It’s the same for the family members of all the other players.”
‘It’s been an anchor for the club’
The impact of the doping saga was profound. It divided groups within the club. Its impact on the players and the on-field performance was significant. It is not the only reason Essendon have been poor on the field in the past decade, but it has had a lasting impact.
“I think it’s been an anchor for the club from that period on,” Watson said.
“And not only the financial. The team that we had formed at that period of time was looking like a very strong side, a very talented side, and players left because of the direct consequence of what had happened. And we lost good players, but we also lost momentum, and we lost the ability for 12 months of footy to improve and play together and then to have to come back and try again.”
But, as Watson explained, it wasn’t only the season of the suspensions that was impacted.
“It’s also the 2012 season was a difficult season because you’re dealing with the actual people there and their erratic behaviour. The 2013 season was affected because of what happens with the investigation. The ’14 season is affected because you lose one coach and another coach comes in. The ’15 season is affected because you’ve got the hearing, [and] then you’ve got the appeal. And then the ’16 season is affected because you’re out, and then the ’17 season’s affected because you’ve missed 12 months of footy.
“So it’s not only like you missed 12 months of footy and it was fine. That’s the frustration, and the thing you’re probably most angry about as a player, is that there’s a five-year period of your career that has been affected.
“There’s guys who are your teammates, who came into the club in 2012 who left in 2015 or ’16, and their whole experience was this chaos and that’s what they think football was, or that was their reality … And that’s really sad for the guys who were trying to live their dream, and it was through no fault of their own. Their whole experience in the AFL system was that period.
“So I think that the anchor that I’m talking about was that the club and the playing group had been primed, and it was a five-year period of disruption, and that then caused the profile of the list to be drastically changed.”
Then-Essendon president Lindsay Tanner on the day the players were suspended.CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
Former Essendon president Lindsay Tanner agrees, noting also the impact of the lost draft picks from the AFL punishment. These are players who, had the Bombers chosen correctly at the draft, would be in their peak playing years now.
“I think you would have to say that the impact of the whole issue across on-field outcomes was significant, but there are bigger factors in play, like at the end of the day we make choices as a club about recruiting players, drafting players, signing coaches, assistant coaches,” Tanner said.
“I wouldn’t want to put it all down [to the CAS decision]. But it’s definitely not irrelevant.
“The point I have made countless times to members was, yes, there are various aspects of this whole saga that I think were completely outrageous and unfair, but never forget that if we had run the club correctly, none of them would be happening.
“So the consequences that we are living through, painful though they are, [are] all consequences that we have effectively brought upon ourselves.”
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Right on cue. Just when the club are reaching clear blue water from the main actors at that time, look to have done well in this year’s ND and strive to begin a sustained rebuild on and off-field under Welshy … the Collingwood, Richmond, Carlton, Norf and Melbourne loving lazy MSM hacks return with it again. They will not leave this alone. Easy clicks.
There’ll be other anniversaries of key moments during the saga period throughout this year. And next year and the one after. Yet there were last year, and the years before that. The same hacks back to pick over the carcass of EFC at the time, to fill a need for cheap AFL sports copy for their publication masters, radio stations or podcasts.
I’d hope Welsh makes a point of informing the new members of the playing group, hell, even the lot of ‘em once again of how unjust it was and how the club are now miles away from it nowadays.. And then gets in the ears of these journos and editors to strongly demand they give the Club the space it now deserves. Just back off and fark off thanks. Give this new setup and group the chance to usher in a renewed, competitive and entertaining EFC. Either with Brad this year or shortly after he’s then let go.
I think we deserve at least that in lieu of proper justice we’ll likely never see.
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If Tanner is going to say that, he must say that:
- it also applied to at least 12 other clubs at the time, and
- that injustice sits with the whole EFC family, and
- until it’s addressed broadly by the AFL world we (especially fans) will maintain an us-against-them mentality.
And our next premiership will be a reckoning and we will celebrate with bile, spleen, alcohol, whatever drugs we want, and pure freedom, you tiny-brained fkheads.
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Have to wonder if he did say things along those lines but it was not included in the article. The quote on its own only serves to perpetuate the scorn. I can see this might suit the media, but why would Tanner do that?
4 Likes