Yep, and each of the 34 got well over a million dollars to suck it up.
Still if it was my kid that had been wrongly labelled a cehat and a crook, II would have gone to highest court and fark the cost.
2 Likes
Iād probably keep the money and be glad it was over
It doesnāt matter how many other clubs had been taken in by the bullcrap emanating from the AFL bosses, they would not have been legally able to vote for deregistration while the case was awaiting consideration by the High Court.
The AFL High Heid Yins are corporate thugs: they were blustering and bullying as usual. Reid stood up to them, and they caved in. The Club bowed down under the AFL yoke. Their reasons for doing so are unclear, but Iāve always believed it had to do with the business networks at the Top End of town.
Basically, the threat must have been: āIf the EFC donāt accept our direction and do what we want, we will ensure that the businessmen who run the EFC are individually ostracised professionally so that no one will trade with them.ā
This cuts right to the heart of the question of the AFL and its organisational set-up.
Who are the AFL bosses answerable to ? Who appoints them ?
If it is the Clubs, given that the ALF owns several of the Clubs outright, how many of the Clubs have voting rights in determining who runs the AFL ?
Who audits the AFL ? Where are their accounts made public ?
Everywhere you look there are attempts to hide information or at the very least to obfuscate it. Take the simple example of the so-called āAFL membershipā. What exactly is it ? Why is it different from membership of an individual club ? What is the legal position or status of a so-called āAFL Memberā as opposed to that of a Member of an individual club ? Or very simply why does it exist ?
The AFL was supposed to be run by the clubs; it is being run in their own personal interests by a small coterie of individuals, a self-perpetuating elite who are in fact answerable to no one, because, as the Essendon Saga llustrates, none of the individual clubs is prepared to rock the boat, for fear that they will be thrown out into deep waters.
Thereās a stench off it which I find utterly disgusting.
12 Likes
Yeah, but I love a confrontation, so it would be all about me.
3 Likes
It may be, even though his wife was a lawyer, James was sick of assurances of watertight legal cases he ran and lost.
Iām not expert but I think they didnāt do that because we were losing the PR battle and weāre being pressured from everywhere not to.
You mean they were too gutless to withstand the pressure and do what was right.
2 Likes
Just read your next post, basically everything you wrote in that. So yes, they werenāt brave enough to withstand that pressure. Honestly not many people would.
1 Like
Clubs have residual voting rights in respect of deregistration and relocation .
I could never understand the basics of changing the conditions of a process, half way through, & having that be legally enforceable. The players signed contracts agreeing to the WADA code as it was in 2012/13. They also signed contracts under the condition that any anti-doping process would be handled through the AFLās anti-doping tribunal with the right of appeal. WADA changed their code in 2015 & without any of our players contractually agreeing to those changes, they were then applied to all players & to the process of hearing the case against the players. This allowed for the de novo hearing which effectively rendered everything the players had already endured to be for nothing. I just cannot accept that changing contractual conditions can be retrospectively applied. It goes against all my basic understandings of what contracts are & how contract law should work. I absolutely believe that an true independent legal representation for the players would have easily argued against the de novo hearing ever progressing or the AFL enforcing any finding of it against the players.
22 Likes
Two seperate issues.
The Club can look after itself and yep PR would affect Sponsors and Membership numbers. AFL would never have deregistered club as Bombers earn them too many dollars, and with the penalties makde it nasty in any case/
Players had their reputations shredded. Even those outside the 34 got screwed by many in the public.
1 Like
You said exactly what my magpie loving barrister mate saud; though you were easier to understand, as he had drunk a couple of bottle of red and spoke like he was in court.
2 Likes
What the J34 legal team argued at CAS and got rejected on de novo.
But they did not argue it to a real court
5 Likes
Hey CAS, can you please rule against the body that owns you & wants to sacrifice us to further their agenda which is to make it easier for you?
7 Likes
And doesnāt francis know it?
1 Like
Which clubs ?
And, as I said, while a club was taking the AFL, ASADA and WADA to the High Court there could be no question of its deregistration, never mind relocation !
According to the AFL Constitution, every club, residual voting rights vary between weighted and simple majority.
Yes. But do the clubs owned by the AFL have the same voting rights as the independent clubs ? If so, that goes against natural justice and must be subject to legal challenge.
1 Like
Equal voting rights, from memory for relocation voting weighting may differ according to the club selected for relocation.
AFL would have votes locked in prior to any vote.