Well, that’s alright then! I’ve been so worried lately. I haven’t been able to sleep, or eat, or leave the house, as I gnawed my fingernails down to the bone and fretted my life away.
All because I feared that the wonderful game of Australian Rules football had been tarnished by that foulest of sins: tanking.
I was developing quite a complex, and my tissue-box shoes were starting to wear out.
But now, o blessed release from care! Thanks be to Andrew Demetriou, who has ended my days of ceaseless paranoia and despair.
What a jolt of joy it is to discover, from the lips of the great man himself, that in fact there is no evidence that tanking exists in the AFL.
I gotta tell you, guys, that is a LOAD OFF! My mind feels light as a feather, as if a heavy burden has been swept from the shoulders of my brain by a mighty broom of integrity.
No tanking! None in the AFL! There’s just no reason to suspect it. There is simply no smoke from which to infer the existence of a fire.
Mr Demetriou has taken a long impartial look at the facts and discovered that all such allegations are utterly baseless.
We bow in awe at his wisdom and fairness.
Now, some might say that the very fact that, after investigating a club suspected of tanking, the AFL has chosen to suspend two of the individuals involved and fine that club $500,000 would in itself be evidence that tanking exists, in that if tanking didn’t exist, it would be sort of weird to punish people for doing it.
A bit like the fact that the police keep arresting robbers is evidence that robbery exists.
But that’s a very simplistic view of things, isn’t it? Let’s take the more sophisticated, Demetriou-esque view and realise that those penalties are not punishments for tanking, but rather gentle reminders to Dean Bailey, Chris Connolly, and the Melbourne Football Club, to be a bit nicer.
Don’t spread nasty rumours. D
on’t go about making people think there’s something wrong.
Obviously, nobody ever tanks, but it’s also important to make sure nobody ever thinks about tanking, so we need harsh penalties for anyone who causes such thoughts to exist.
I’m sure they’ve learned their lesson and can move forward happier and better-adjusted, just like Andrew himself.
Of course, some might say that the fact that one of the players who played for the club during the time when tanking was alleged to have occurred publicly stated that tanking definitely occurred, is also evidence that tanking exists, in that somebody saying something happened, or in legal terms, “eyewitness testimony”, is often considered at least some kind of evidence that the thing happened.
Again, unsophisticated thinking. So Brock McLean said that Melbourne tanked. What would he know? The coaching staff probably just told him that they were tanking, afraid that if they told him they were actually planning to win, his notoriously big mouth would cause him to blurt confidential game plans all over the media.
Classic tactical genius from the football department: there’s always one player at every club who you lie to: it’s called PSYCHOLOGY, yeah? So let’s hear none of that.
And naturally, some are almost certain to say that when you explicitly provide a tangible reward for the team which performs worst over the season, thus for all intents and purposes handing out prizes for losing, it’s absolutely inevitable that teams will lose on purpose.
Some will say that is evidence that tanking exists. Some will say the bizarre positional moves made by Melbourne on match days are evidence.
Some will say the weird and inexplicable plunge in the number of interchanges made by Melbourne during games after that point in the 2009 season when they couldn’t afford to gain winning form is evidence.
Some will say that, quite apart from Melbourne’s performances, the strangely consistent losing record that teams tend to have when placed in a position to gain a priority pick, is evidence.
And some might say that the fact that everyone knows that tanking exists and clubs do it pretty much every year and you’d have to be some kind of head-trauma-suffering imbecile, or a sociopathic liar, to deny this blatantly obvious reality, is evidence that tanking exists.
But look, just try not to think about it.
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