Every single person at Hawthorn Football Club party to commissioning this report should resign and apologise

The same hacks eager to disregard any notion of due process and destroy the livelihood and reputations of three men based on a report penned by an activist have suddenly gone very quiet.

Chris Fagan and Alastair Clarkson have been named, shamed and forced to take leave from their respective roles. Picture: Michael Willson

Well, well, well, haven’t the race-baiting sports media been stunned into silence?

The same hacks eager to disregard any notion of due process and destroy the livelihood and reputations of three men, Alistair Clarkson, Chris Fagan and Jason Burt, based on a report penned by an activist and leaked to the media, are suddenly quiet.

The author of that report, Phil Egan, who failed to interview the three accused, or indeed anybody who was non-Indigenous, nevertheless concluded that there had been race-based “bullying and intimidation’’ that amounted to “human rights abuses”.

Incredibly, his Cultural Safety Review was accepted as gospel.

Hawks report author Phil Egan.

It mattered not to the football media that the trio was being damned based on untested allegations of anonymous accusers whose identities remained protected while the accused were named, shamed and forced to take leave from their respective roles.

When I wrote about this saga back in September the witch-hunt was at fever pitch, with the majority of football pundits believing that Clarkson was a goner and possibly Fagan, too. Such was the blood lust among the media that Clarkson was criticised for strongly refuting the allegations and slamming the process.

Veteran reporter Caroline Wilson called Clarkson “combative” and his statement proclaiming his innocence “ill-advised”. One wonders whether silence would’ve been interpreted as an admission of guilt.

If they float then they’re a witch, if they sink and drown then they’re innocent. Seems fair.

This week Egan was arrested as part of a fraud investigation. He was released and, police say, is expected to be charged on summons for allegedly stealing from a body meant to help Indigenous communities.

Egan denies any wrongdoing and is innocent unless proven guilty. That’s how it’s supposed to be. But when it came to the trio accused of racist bullying there was no such restraint. Though they did not face any criminal charges, there was an eagerness to believe the worst of the accusations. The entire process was deeply flawed and unfair.

Every single person at Hawthorn Football Club party to commissioning this report should resign and apologise. They have recklessly inflicted enormous damage on the club, as well as the competition, not to mention irreversibly damaging the good names of three men.