Junk mail, Jobe's medal and New York coffee

CEOs of multi-billion dollar sporting organisations are busy people, as a rule. They usually have other people to read their mail for them, and it’s not only because of their totalitarian inclinations and disdain for transparency. It’s because they’re busy people. They need to limit the extraneous demands on their time.

There’s no reason AFL boss Gillon McLachlan even had to see the email sent to him last week by James Hird’s father, Allan, let alone read it. There’s no reason anyone had to.

The email was also sent to the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, the chief executive of the AFL Players Association, Paul Marsh, and Fairfax Media – “among others”, according to Fairfax.

You’d assume it would take a crisis of some urgency to warrant interrupting the PM during an election campaign, and the AFLPA chief during negotiations for the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The CBA will bind all parties until the end of 2021. It has to be done by the end of the month. Paul has some late nights ahead.

Why stop there, Allan? Why not petition the International Olympic Committee?

The Games are a good two months away. There have been no reported deaths from the Zika virus in the last twelves hours. Maybe he already has. Maybe the IOC was one of the “others” copied into his email.

Hird Snr was forced to raise the red alert because he was “dismayed and angry (but not surprised) to read continuing reports in the newspapers that the AFL is contemplating taking away Jobe Watson’s Brownlow Medal.”

Not too sure how that’s a clinical emergency, except to the clinically self-absorbed. But it’s a free country, I guess.

He was certainly free with his advice, if the Fairfax excerpts are any indication.

To McLachlan: “If you had bothered to read the Court of Arbitration for Sport decision, you would know that not only was there no evidence to find Jobe and the other 33 players guilty, but WADA relied upon ASADA’s misconduct/corruption to secure its guilty findings.”

That’s an interesting interpretation, if we’re talking about the same CAS judgment. There was plenty of evidence in the one I read.

There was the testimony provided by Dr James Cox, an expert in the molecular structure of the banned peptide at the centre of the case. Cox analysed the substance compounded for Stephen Dank by Nima Alavi, Dank’s compounding chemist, and was 99 per cent certain it was Thymosin Beta 4. He testified to it under oath.

Conditions have favoured the sceptics in this case. For various reasons of public account it hasn’t required enormous skill to raise doubts about the precise value of expert testimony.

Cox’s evidence held up. His credentials held up. CAS regarded his expertise as “relevant and specific”. It was “wholly convinced” by his “impressive evidence”. By the time court adjourned he had a useful corroborator in Dr John Vine, the players’ expert. Vine put the likelihood at 98 per cent.

That altered the outlook somewhat. The sprawling cumulus of detail that had failed to convince the AFL tribunal assumed a more definite character now it was directed at a single target rather than an entire waterfront. The players’ QC reverted to the default position, but the camp had moved on. The evidence put TB4 in Dank’s syringe. The CAS panel didn’t need to know where he got it from. Rightly or wrongly, it was prepared to take a wild stab at what he did with it.

The players were less impressive, it emerges. They’d been “economical with the truth” in their interviews with ASADA, and selective in their disclosures on the doping control forms (“you list the things you feel you need to list”, one said) .

The seven players summoned for examination before CAS arbitrators gave contradictory evidence. The whole 34 had refused en masse to be examined before the AFL tribunal, as had other key witnesses. They’re still pretty sketchy on what ‘cooperation’ means, for the purpose of the anti-doping code.

No wonder the witness evidence wasn’t compelling. The tribunal wasn’t able to compel any useful witnesses.

The question isn’t whether the case should have gone to the international court. It’s whether there was ever much point taking to the AFL tribunal, which was patently ill-equipped to hear it.

CAS arbitrates sports doping cases all the time. That’s what it does. It considers evidence and decides what it means. In this case it considered the evidence and decided that Jobe was injected with a banned performance-enhancing substance. These cases aren’t decided by a leadership group. They’re decided by a court. I don’t know why he hasn’t been relieved of his medal already.

It’s unfortunate and regrettable, and it’s taken far too long. Jobe is plainly a decent fellow and by all accounts and a promising barista. But that’s the best evidence we have. This is the world we live in.

Sometime this year a Swiss federal tribunal will determine whether the CAS appeal was conducted according to a fair and correct procedure. It’s a valid question, chiefly because it wasn’t an appeal in any sense we normally understand. But it won’t alter the evidence.

It’ll be decided on written submissions in an office – no squaring off in a courtroom, no examination of witnesses, no cables or chains. The experts won’t be asked to retract their testimony. The players won’t be invited to get their stories straight. The evidence won’t vanish. I don’t know what the AFL are expecting to happen.

Elsewhere in his advisory Allan counsels McLachlan on how the AFL can atone for its sins ahead of the inevitable retribution to come. Things gets a bit jumbled here but it seems he’s been digging around for the damning secrets ASADA refused to reveal to the senate committee that enquired into its conduct.

He’s had some QCs take a look and they’re very confident with what he’s got. Take note, Gillon.

“I suggest your (AFL) lawyers try and find holes in it. When they can’t, you should do everything possible to ensure the guilty findings are overturned and that ASADA and WADA are held responsible for their misconduct.”

What are they supposed to be finding holes in? Is there a judgment available, or some kind of senate report or summary of findings, a charge sheet? I like your confidence but I don’t know if an email is going to do the trick.

Father and son aren’t too dissimilar, as a casual observation. Both are convinced there is always some higher authority to whom they can turn for vindication, as a kind of birthright, but whose judgments they’re free to reject.

Hasn’t ASADA already been subjected to a searching examination by an appropriate federal authority, twice, at the son’s behest? Passed the test pretty comfortably, as I recall.

Both share the same confidence in the court of public opinion and the vindication it will eventually deliver, when everything is out in the open. The only slight doubt is why this faith is largely confined to them.

“To be honest,” Allan continues, “I don’t understand why Jobe doesn’t demand that you charge him, and immediately set up a hearing which is open to the public.”

Jobe can do that, can he? Just walk into AFL House and ask Gillon to cuff him? Where will the public hearing be held, and when? Federation Square is full of protesting homeless people at the moment. Jobe is in New York, making coffee.

Here’s another idea. Why doesn’t Jobe toss the precious metal in the Hudson River and keep walking, whistle as the wind blows, easy come easy go. Is it worth that much? If a medal is the worst thing he loses in his life, he’ll be doing okay. Some people have to make coffee for the six bucks an hour it pays.

As for Gillon, the only direction he should give is to his mail detail. It goes like this: “Re: Further correspondence from Hird Sr. Action: Straight to trash.”

Copy that.