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James and Tania Hird sat in the back left corner of the court, Paul Little and his strapping young lieutenants in the far right aisle way down the front.
It made you wonder if the terms of last year’s Deed of Settlement specified that Essendon’s two most public identities must sit as far away from each other as humanly possible whenever they’re required to appear in the same public forum.
An hour or so later their two QCs would also present something less than a united front.
Justice John Middleton had asked Hird’s man, Peter Hanks, whether the court had the discretion to make a different ruling for the players than for the club and its suspended coach. He was speculating on the granting (or not) of relief in the event that Essendon lost the case. Hanks said he believed the judge did possess that discretion.
Whereupon Neil Young, the former Federal Court judge now representing Essendon – with formidable aplomb, it has to be said – sprang to his feet and begged to differ. Young invoked some dry legal authority or other and concluded that, depending on the reasons for the decision, the judge would likely have no such discretionary power.
Misleading impressions both, as it turns out. The differing views of the two silks was no more than an incidental glitch in a joint operation as honed and calibrated as the joint investigation they say the AFL and ASADA have so unscrupulously conducted – “each with the aid of the other”.
And sure enough, during a short adjournment just prior to lunch, the Hirds were engaged in an obviously amiable conversation with the doughty Bombers’ chairman, enjoying a light-hearted interlude among the gathering murk.
Of course, we now know that the settlement reached last year was not quite as final or freely consented to as the AFL’s gloss merchants tried to portray it.
Late in the afternoon, sitting in the witness box, Hird was questioned ad nauseum on why he hadn’t strenuously protested to the contrite tone of the fateful press conference on February 5 last year.
Most of the talking at that press conference was done by former president, David Evans, who had committed his club to co-operating with the oncoming investigation. Evans was flanked by Hird and former CEO Ian Robson, both of whom had contributed more in the way of supportive nods and grave expressions than statements of any particular moment.
“I’m a servant of the club”, Hird answered. “I didn’t see it as an opportunity to publicly disagree”. But he did “privately” disagree with the path his president intended to take the club down, he said.
“I was surprised David was saying we’d called for an investigation.”
Hird said Gillon McLachlan had told him it would “look good” if he appeared at the press conference with his fellow club leaders. He submitted to the investigation for the same reason.
“I was told by the club, by David Evans and Ian Robson, that we should co-operate with ASADA and with the AFL, because if we co-operated it would go well for our players,” he said. “The players are the most important thing and I followed David Evans’ and Ian Robson’s lead.”
Of the anwsers he gave at the interrogative interviews to which he’d been summoned under AFL powers but which seem to have been conducted almost exclusively by ASADA’s investigators, chiefly John Nolan: “I was told to tell the truth but not what Andrew Demetriou said to David Evans on the 4th of February.”
And the Deed of Settlement that resulted in, among other things, his recently-concluded French exile: “I signed the settlement under threats, inducements and great duress,” he said.
To some extent these were scripted responses, no doubt, the deft insertion of A Demetriou into the conversation prime among them. But it rang true enough.
If his cross-examiner Sue McNicol, QC, found it all a bit much to swallow, it could be that she needs to spend less time sifting through the legal authorities and more time acquainting herself with the high-faux-drama of the football press conference.
Hird’s evidence continues today at 10am.
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