AFL bosses dismissed tanking claims even after damning interviews

AFL bosses scoffed at suggestions Melbourne deliberately set out to lose games in 2009, despite damning claims by key figures during the tanking investigation.

AFL chief Andrew Demetriou and his then-deputy Gillon McLachlan scoffed at suggestions Melbourne conspired to deliberately lose games — or “tank” — even after the league’s investigation.

Back in 2009, an incensed Andrew Demetriou declared: “If people want to run the line about tanking and beat it up so be it, but it doesn’t change our view.”

Announcing the findings of its seven-month probe, McLachlan remained convinced there had been no co-ordinated tanking scheme.

Read the tanking story we broke in 2012 that the AFL dismissed:

‘EIGHT CHANGES, WE’LL BE RIGHT’

The 2009 draft, where Melbourne snared high picks off the back of their poor season. Chris Connolly with Tom Scully, Jordan Gysberts, Jack Trengove and coach Dean Bailey.

The league’s integrity unit investigators, Brett Clothier and Abraham Haddad, interviewed 58 current and former club players, coaches, administrators and officials between August and December 2012.

They also seized computers, files and emails.

But McLachlan said the probe found there had been no directive from the board or executive that the team should deliberately lose matches.

READ THE INTERVIEWS HERE

Neither the club nor its coach set out not to win, McLachlan said.

The investigation, according to the AFL, was only able to prove that football manager Chris Connolly made an inappropriate comment in one meeting, several days after Melbourne’s third win of the season in Round 15 over Port Adelaide.

WHEN THE AFL SAID THERE WAS NO TANKING

Former AFL boss Andrew Demetriou dismissed tanking claims.

SECRET TANKING INTERVIEWS REVEALED

‘DISGRACEFUL’ PERIOD IN DEES HISTORY BLASTED

“Connolly has accepted he went into a football department meeting and he made a terrible and stupid decision in the context of an AFL rule that has now changed (priority draft picks) and in the context of a pressure and expectation of success,” McLachlan said.

“He made a comment regarding the performance of the team, a desire to secure a priority pick and I know he now regrets that comment.”

McLachlan said the investigation had also found: “Dean Bailey felt pressure to act in that way and he was feeling pressure for his job … as coach of the club he felt pressured after that meeting and made decisions to appease, ultimately Chris, and made decisions around resting players and positional selections of players in that context.”

But that did not equate to tanking, McLachlan said.

“I actually don’t know what the definition of tanking is. In the AFL rules it talks to performing on merits and the best of their ability. In my view, there was no tanking on match day,” McLachlan said.

“There is no allegation that is able to be sustained that Dean Bailey didn’t coach on his merits or any players didn’t play to their utmost abilities,’’ he added.

“To be clear, Dean Bailey, on match day, coached to the very best of his ability.”

The result was charges against both Bailey and Connolly for “acting in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the AFL”.

Bailey was banned from coaching for the first 16 rounds of 2013 and Connolly suspended from the game for a year.

Melbourne was fined $500,000 for hiring the pair, but Schwab and all other club officials were cleared of wrongdoing.

There’s more to this story in Friday’s Herald Sun newspaper and at heraldsun.com.au