Monday 6 May 2013

Essendon: We all did wrong, but no-one’s responsible

Since mainstream NZ media are reporting the travails of the Essendon Bombers AFL Football Club, aka The Flying Syringes, let me offer you the summary from The Roar of the club’s internal inquiry into alleged illegal drug use at the club:

The Essendon Football Club has gone public with the findings of the internally launched Ziggy Switkowski Report into the club’s management and administrative protocols.
    Citing legal reasons, the club has said the document itself cannot be made public. [Oops.]
    Club chairman Davis Evans summed up the findings thus – “Problems occurred in selection, recruitment processes, induction processes, management of contractors … in the football department.”

Apart from the receptionist, that’s pretty much everyone at the club, I should think.

It actually points to a systematic failure from key personnel with regard to practices that could still have seismic ramifications for the club.
   
Yet, as alluded to in the media prior to today’s media conference, no staff will be shown the door as a result of their roles in the fiasco.
   
In other words, those who were ultimately responsible for putting the club through the wringer will be kept in the same positions of trust, a trust that they individually and collectively breached.

What happens next? Well, given that AFL head Andrew Demetriou was prominent in attending the Essendon game at the weekend with his children, one of the kids wearing a very new Essendon scarf, I’d suggest that very public statement suggests nothing will be coming the Bombers’ way from that quarter.

On the other hand, since the enquiry is about behaviour by the club last year, when it started with a hiss and a roar before seeing it season collapse as player after player fell over with soft-tissue injuries, it’s hard to see that what the players were injecting were really performance enhancing.

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