"The pills won’t help you now"
- The pills won't help you now, The Chemical Brothers
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| The scourge of the modern game; almost as bad as Tom Waterhouse - photo: wired.com |
Since the story broke, everyone has had their say and with each new milestone, more voices join the chorus. In Tuesday’s Age alone there were eight separate articles about the crisis at Essendon, and that doesn’t include the Herald-Sun, The Australian and the 15 to 20 footy shows on TV that rake over the same old ground.
And just to round it off, in Wednesday’s Herald-Sun Jeff Kennett had his say. Who would have thought he’d have a viewpoint?
Despite this, the definitive view has yet to be expressed so it’s time this story was told the way it should be – that is, from the Hawthorn perspective.
Listen to any Essendon supporter talk about this topic (if you can’t avoid it that is) and they’d have you believe that Caroline Wilson is the chief culprit in the drug scandal enveloping their club. ‘She’s got it in for Hirdy’ they’ll tell you. ‘It’s a witch hunt’ they assert. Then they say other things about her that I won’t repeat, but many of which rhyme with ‘witch’ and ‘hunt’.
It’s true, they could also pick on Patrick Smith, who is equally condemning of the culture at Essendon, but no one reads The Australian so he escapes such censorious name calling.
At some point when listening to these diatribes I like to point out that Caroline Wilson didn’t inject anyone with pig’s blood or goat’s placenta, force anyone to snort smegma or put anyone on a drip of rattlesnake semen. She merely reported on events. To blame her for Essendon’s program of pharmacological experimentation is akin to a Republican blaming Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for exposing Nixon’s duplicities, rather than, say, blaming Nixon.
To restate it, Caroline Wilson didn’t inject anyone or introduce a program of systematic cheating using the bodies of young men as experimental lab rats to rort the competition. Obviously I’m not asserting that anyone else did either, and while I may seem to be strongly hinting at it, in my defence your honour, I submit that being a Hawthorn fan, I have a role to live up to, am obliged by the forces of history, by the very genetic instructions encrypted into my DNA, to peg Essendon of guilty of all allegations levelled against them, as well as others we don’t know of yet, crimes unresolved, some not yet even committed.
Some fence-sitting, wuss-bag commentators – usually ex-players or known Essendon fans – are saying that we need to wait for the investigation to be completed and for the facts to emerge before we come to conclusions, judge and condemn. Where’s the fun in that? Besides, this uncharacteristic measured response from footy commentators is at odds with the normal hair-trigger reactions they exhibit over other moral issues that filter into the footy world, such as Ben Cousins’ tribulations.
We don’t need to wait for pathology results or compare interview accounts to work out what took place. This is a club, after all, which has already been found guilty of salary cap rorting in the 90s when, incidentally, Hird and Thompson were both playing.
Hird himself has been accused of taking anti-ageing supplements. Well, we don’t need forensic toxicology analysis of hair samples or white cell counts in blood tests to gauge this; you only have to look at the bloke - he still looks like he’s 25.
“Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we were voodoo”
- Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie
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| Ziggy hands down his report - photo: musiclipse.com |
Much was anticipated of Ziggy Switkowski’s report on the internal governance and medical practices at Essendon during 2012. Why, I can’t imagine. Two of the most pivotal players in the saga, Dean ‘The Weapon’ Robinson and Stephen ‘The Pharmacist’ Dank, weren’t even interviewed for the report. It’s difficult, therefore, to see what concrete findings it could possibly reach. It’s like trying to measure global warming without checking the temperature.
It’s also difficult to understand how a character can swan into a club calling himself ‘The Pharmacist’ without someone raising an eyebrow, if not an actual objection. Add in a bloke known as ‘Dr Ageless’ and you’ve got a coven of baddies who wouldn’t be out of place in the next Batman movie.
And just how independent was the Switkowski report? When you consider Bowie’s immortal lines, “Making love with his ego, Ziggy sucked up into his mind” you have to question whether Ziggy himself wasn’t participating in the Dr Frankensteinesque practices of Windy Hill.
"Now the drugs don’t work
They just make you worse"
- The drugs don't work, The Verve
Despite this issue surfacing in February, here we are in May and ASADA still hasn’t interviewed any of the players. I mean I know they’ve been busy with Cronulla, but this all started 10 weeks ago. Meanwhile Essendon is winning games of football.
While I’m keen for the investigation to interrupt Essendon’s season, on the other hand, the more games Essendon win, the more we can all enjoy it when half team is suspended and their points are wiped.
Which leads us to the serious issue of what, if any, sanctions Essendon should face? You’ll recall that Ben Cousins was banned for 12 months for bringing the game into disrepute, even though he never failed a drug test. Nor was he ever even alleged to have taken performance enhancing substances; just good-time recreational drugs. So given this precedent, you have to assume severe penalties will be meted out: the coaching panel banned, players suspended, all their points wiped, perhaps banished to the EDFL, premierships stripped from them, and all coaching staff, players and officials sent to Naru.
As for individuals, Jobe Watson’s 2012 Brownlow should be ripped from his neck and awarded to Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin, who finished equal second. Perhaps there could be a ceremony where Jobe presents both Sam and Trent with the 2012 Brownlow? His dad, Tim, could bring it to us live on Channel 7.
"I've seen the needle and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone."
- The Needle and the Damage Done, Neil Young
Much is being made of Dr Bruce Reid’s opposition to the controversial supplements regime and the missing letter detailing his concerns. This issue is perhaps easier to understand when you consider Dr Reid’s age; firstly, would anyone at Essendon have known what a letter was? He should have tweeted his concerns. Or ‘face-timed’ them. Someone might have taken notice then.
Also, is his view as impartial as everyone seems to think? After all, he’s been know to proscribe some fairly exotic cures in his time. Remember, when he started out as club doctor at Essendon in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, he was still using leeches to suppress fevers and purify blood. Reid’s leeches, Danks’ cow’s placenta – what’s the difference?
After denying that there’s any evidence their club has done anything wrong – and we particularly love James Hird’s comment that no one from Essendon has ever tested positive for a banned substance; hmm where might we have heard that defence before? – the next point Essendon fans make is to question how many other clubs are doing it. As if that makes it ok. That’s akin to the conservative view on climate change; that Australia doesn’t need to take action because China isn’t. Two or more wrongs make a right, or at least make it alright to look the other way.
The question Essendon fans should in fact be asking is why the club persisted on a pathway that put their own beloved players at risk, and to which any resulting success would be devoid of honour. Or don’t they care about honour?
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