It’s hard to see how any Essendon person in 2012 can stay at club, writes Jon Ralph
JOHN RALPH: AS recently as late Thursday afternoon Essendon was still determined to welcome James Hird back into the fold.
Jon Ralph
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AS recently as late Thursday afternoon Essendon was still determined to welcome James Hird back into the fold.
According to president Paul Little’s own statement, Hird and other employees had “accepted sanctions handed down by the AFL” so he would be back as soon as Round 23.
Yet after a day when the earth shook for the Essendon Football Club, it is impossible to think the show-cause notices weren’t game-changers for Hird and his coaching staff.
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Forget about $1 million dollar contract. Forget about the assurances from Little.
If Essendon players are charged as expected with doping infraction notices, it is hard to see how any coach or person in a position of responsibility in 2012 can stay at the club.
The hardest element in this whole sordid mess is to divorce “James Hird the Legend” from his role as a simple sporting coach.
But let’s try.
If in any other code in Australia or across the world if an anti-doping body accused 34 players in a club of drug cheating it is unfathomable to think the coach would remain.
Not one player taking contaminated meat, or an unwitting player using a banned energy drink, but almost an entire list involved in doping infractions, even without their knowledge.
They would be removed even without accusing that coach of being complicit, or ignoring warning signals, or with the knowledge his governing body had suspended him for bringing the game into disrepute.
Not only would the coach be removed, but all traces of that previous regime — coaches, sports scientists, support staff — would be ripped from the club with new faces starting anew.
Which includes Mark Thompson, Bruce Reid, Simon Goodwin and others still at the club.
The most unfair aspect of this sorry episode is that Hird has never been able to fully defend his actions.
He has apologised to fans in a website statement, but never been allowed by the club to go into details about his actions during 2012.
Why didn’t he act when Doc Reid told him he had “fundamental problems being club doctor” and that Essendon was “playing at the edge”.
How did he respond when Reid asked him “whether you would want your children being injected with a derivative hormone that is not free to the community?”
To that point, why didn’t Reid try harder to be heard, or storm out in protest in preservation of his reputation with the same force that took him to the front steps of the Supreme Court?
But the gagging of Hird means he cannot defend the most hurtful accusations, with Hird at least publicly defiant about the 2012 issue, even if the reality is very different.
One day this saga will be at an end, a point made well by Paul Salmon yesterday when he stated: “It is a great and proud club and it will be again one day.”
It might be one or three or five years down the track.
But as Adelaide is finding out now with administrator Steven Trigg after its Kurt Tippett salary cap penalties, can a club truly move on unless the people in charge are new?
Or is the only way forward for Essendon to strip this club to its foundations and build it again brick by brick without Hird and his million-dollar coaching staff?
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