Essendunce
There is stupid and then there is Essendon. If Lance Armstrong looked up ‘stupid’ he would find his name and then if he looked under ‘incredibly stupid’ he would find the Essendon Football Club. While Armstrong is at it he should also look up ‘moral nihilistic’, ‘sociopath’, ‘liar’, ‘bully’, ‘criminal’, and last, but not least ‘roles you can play while incarcerated’. However I diverge.
The news this week that Essendon has or hasn’t been injecting illegal substances or peptides or red cordial is flabbergasting on many levels. First of all how Essendon could employ someone who goes by the self-proclaimed non de plume of The Weapon (even his wife has to call him The Weapon) is worrying. If someone had come to my high school and tried to call themselves The Weapon they soon would have been called The Wanker. I would have expected the same at a decent footy club, but obviously that doesn’t apply at Essendon. Regardless The Weapon is no more and will be now known as The Blunt Crayon.
As for Stephen Dank alarm bells should have rung.
Where does Bomber Thompson lie in all this seeing as The Crayon worked at Geelong with him?
What about the coach formerly known as King James? Given the buck, or peptides, stop with him then Master James will have to grovel a great deal to get his reputation back if that is even possible.
In the wash up, I am predicting Essendon will not play for points this year and the likeable Jobe Watson will have to forfeit his Brownlow medal. It is a sad day for footy, but fans shouldn’t worry too much as it is only Essendon. I still haven’t forgiven them for losing the ’90 Grand Final to Collingwood.
As final point, The Crayon was a rodeo clown prior to working in the footy world.
The Chairman
The mileage in this saga is breathtaking. If it could be laid end to end it would circle the globe five times and still be able to orbit Uranus without running out of impetuous. Whoever thought this up at Jellymont House, take a bow. What a way to put The Code on the front page as a lead up to season 2013?
Obviously they’d gone too early with the Melbourne tanking review. It had all but died in the bum and the Give-a-shyte Cup hadn’t even got underway. brilliant stuff Andraes. No wonder your on two mill plus, plus, plus.
Of course it’s not true. How could it be? Pretty Boy Bambi a druggy? Come on. His colleague Bomber, the legendary dual premiership coach returning to the club whereat he made his name involved in an on-going conspiracy to chemically enhance his overly inflated salary? You’ve got to be kidding. The little club on that wind swept bastion of everything that is good & decent about Our Great Game stooping as low as – nay, lower than – those Silvertails along Royal Parade in their quest for immorality? Now I know you’re lost somewhere out there in the never never world of fantasy land.
Surely we’ll all wake up one morning , maybe tomorrow morning, maybe the morning after, with the sweat soaked bed sheets in a knot of tortured anxiety to find the sun is still shining and the lawns need mowing. This is the sort of thing that happens in other parts of the world. Places like Mumbai, or Milan, or Auckland. But never here in Oz. Surely not.
In the meantime, let’s all keep an eye on our Bomberland cousins, and nurse them through these dark times. Practice putting sincerity into phrases like ‘look, two years will pass in no time’. Or ‘In a hundred years all this will have blown over’. Or even – if you think you’ll be taken in the sprit in which it is meant – ‘It couldn’t have happened to nicer bunch of arrogant pricks’.
Throw the book at them lol
If you saw the movie “Awakenings” (a real story about the early professional career of famous neurologist Oliver Sacks) – patients who had been in a coma with ‘encephalitis lethargica’ (sleeping sickness) for 50 years were temporarily awakened by the new drug L-Dopa.
Tragically the sudden benefits of the drug, just as suddenly wore off.
Maybe that’s what happened to Essendon mid-season.
Cue “When the Drugs Don’t Work”.
Imagine West Coast doing something as a club
(a) so dumb
(b) so likely to be found out
(c) so fraught with ramifications
(d) so tainting of the decent players
After trial by injury, there would be 17 clubs again , quicker than Andreas the Cypriot could say no drugtank, no gamblicorruption problems,no worries
West Coast deserve all the criticism and sanctions they rightly got for the Cousins/Chick/Gardiner/Kerr party drugs era. It taints our 2006 premiership, even though we will never know how much it helped or hindered the major perpetrators (Gardiner was not playing, and the allegations about Kerr are for sporadic out-of-season partying).
Nevertheless its damning, and the Club let itself be wilfully blinded while it was winning (2007 was more serious as the disciplines wore off in the post-premiership celebrating and egomania).
It is clear that there was a dramatic culture change after 2007 and we took our 08/09/10 medicine as the player group was rebuilt in exemplary fashion. To his great credit Daniel Kerr is now a model citizen on and off the field.
The Eagles management of 05/06/07 was negligent and a small group of leading players were culpable.
I suggest that is a fair bit down the severity scale from having your own employees/sub-contractors (i.e. people paid and contracted to you) inject unknown, untested and unproven – for efficacy or safety – substances on a regular and systematic basis. Whatever the label may have said the actual ingredients will always be uncertain given its dubious origins. “Human guinea pigs” as Matt Finnis rightly said.
The Essendon players had as much real capacity to “just say no” as Lance Armstrong’s domestiques.
Wonder what the long term fertility and cancer rates will be for Essendon players?
‘See the Bombers spike up, up………..’
This ‘drugs’ in professional sport controvesy in the past week has been a massive immature and illinformed overreaction by the media and the nanny state do-gooders who work for the sports anti-doping authorities and the crime commission. Opportunistic government ministers have also taken the opportunity for some political grandstanding. It is bemusing that this overreaction followed a mickey mouse interview with a sacked former Essendon player.
People need to understand that the pharmaceutical companies, drug manufacturers and sports scientists are probably twenty years ahead of the sports anti-doping testing regimes, the sports governing bodies and medical authorities. There are a huge range of drugs and dietary supplements produced around the the world and the government health authorites have a difficult job in assessing the health benefits of these products. A lot of these products are also available from countries which have few, if any, health regulations for their manufacture and distribution. Most of us can only have faith in the knowledge and expertise of our doctors concerning the use of these substances.
I also believe that the policies of prohibiting substances for professional sport and recreation are flawed because history shows that prohibition results in a black market, which is outside the control of health authorities and the medical profession. I believe that most people who use banned substances for professional sport and banned drugs for recreation do so responsibly and sensibly without any adverse health affects. I am less confident about people in amateur and community sport obtaining obtaining drugs via the internet or on the black market without medical supervision.
I also believe that Lance Armstrong has been unfairly derided for his admission to using banned substances in his professional cycling career. The reason for the witchhunt of Armstrong by the nanny state do-gooders who work for U.S.A.D.A. and W.A.D.A. is that they are vindictive and ‘pissed-off’ because he beat their system by not testing positive. Armstrong was smarter than the people at the anti-doping authorities and employed an excellent doctor who managed the use of these banned substances with care so that he did not test positive. I also have not heard that Armstrong has had any adverse health affects from his use of banned substances.
I would like to see an informed and mature discussion on the use of drugs and dietary supplements for the treatment of illness, health wellbeing, sports recovery and for recreation which includes medical scientists and ethicists.
But mark, what about the people whose lives and livelihoods Lance ruined with his bullying and threats? He at least deserves derision for that.
As for the Bummers, my prediction is that if players did actually take naughty stuff ASADA will only severely reprimand them on the basis they were lied to by trusted employees of the club. It’ll be the likes of the rodeo clown and Bomber Thompson that will be whacked from all sides.
Fun seeing them squirm though in the meantime, having received some joyous texts last week from a Bombout mate re my club’s strife with good time drugs.
I agree with your sentiments Mark .Much of the reaction has been hysterical and there needs to be an informed discussion about the use of drugs in sport and for health issues in the community. Politicians and sporting bodies are typically panicking -too late, after the horse has bolted.
I find it difficult to imagine, that a young man, who has dreamed all his life of playing footy at its highest level, when he is finally drafted by an AFL club, would do anything to impede his chances of getting a game. Arriving at a club, he would do all that he is told to do to secure a place in the team. It would take an individual of rare moral strength, maturity and courage, to question those in authority and risk the scuttling his dream. Similarly, I believe it is rare that an individual within any work place, family, cultural group, religious organisation, etc. will challenge or question the order (or disorder) of the group.
In the fall out from investigations into illegal doping and betting in Australian sport, watch and wait for the smoke and mirrors: a few will be hung out to dry, so that they can be sacrificially chewed up in a media feeding frenzy. The junkie/dealer will be arrested in a big police bust, while the real criminals get away unscathed, their trail lost in a media spin of their own making.
In the big brassy world of footy, the game we all love; the game that has gone from talented parochial starlet to stitched-up and botoxed movie star, we are witnessing the results of delivering the precious heart and soul of Australian rules football into the manipulating hands of invisible moguls.
You can take the lady out of Essendon Pam, but you can’t take Essendon out of the lady.