James Hird's father hits out at AFL officials in explosive interview

What evidence....ASADA has no evidence so who has?..Their evidence is that their supplier had access to the banned drug.....No evidence it was used on Essondon players. As for your version of a paid gap year I think Hindsite would back-up a case for stress leave dont you?

Adelaide, injecting players with totally legal products is totally legal and morally correct as well. If no proof of anything illegal why has he faced so much blame? All I say is SHOW ME THE PROOF

Cronulla have certainly done far better than usual since they used the same injection regime yet no-one puts 2 & 2 together. As I have said above tho...There is still no proof of any thing illigal being done. I believe if you want to punish someone for doing wrong then surely you need to prove they did wrong.....Not rumours, not hearsay, not "There supplier has illegal drugs so therefor they must have used them" and there is NO PROOF. Zero, Zilch

Has any actual proof of the suppossed drug use been found? NO NO NO. There is ZERO evidence or possitivw tests to say ANYONE used or administered an illegal drug. In fact those who were administering the injections say there was NO illegal drugs used at all. AFL buries head as they need a fallguy

Angela read or skim the CAS ruling. The finding was that players were being injected with a banned substance (TB4) - some in the media have spun it as an "unknown substance" but that's simply not what he CAS found. Testimonny, emails, and other evidence established that the players were using a banned substance. And also what some Essendon fans who are forever going to be in denial seem too eager to gloss over is one very uncomfortable and inconvenient fact - their team were a relatively lowly team outside the top 8 who had a reputation of being pushed around physically then in just one pre-season they miraculously rocketed up the ladder winning 8 of their 9 first games of the seasons, including beating up on teams they couldn't get close to in the prior season. You can't hang Essendon on that miraculous form reversal alone but it all fit nicely together when you find out the players were all getting jabbed all pre-season. If it waddles like a duck, and if it quacks like a duck...

Are you asking the right questions? As I understand it, the anti-doping regime sheets responsibility home to the players and that is what has happened here. The players must know what it is being injected, must inform themselves etc...so the players should be punished. As for Hird's punishment- look apart from he ban he did serve, the honourable thing for him to have done would have been to resign rather than take a paid gap year in France. Hird has plenty of evidence to know that the players were in fact using a banned substance - his insistence otherwise was/is delusional.

MF - you said :" What point are you making? The CEO will generally have to take responsibility for the club as a whole" That's precisely my point. Robson took responsibility and said he didn't have any idea about what the players were injected with. Hird wouldn't accept that he was responsible in anyway and yet he repeatedly claimed he was certain nothing illegal was taken. So how would he know? MF - you said: "Leigh Matthews confirmed that the delineation between the football department and the high performance department, as existed at EFC, also existed at the Lions when he was there. He said straight out he would not have known what supplements the players were taking" You seem to be helping make my point with that statement. Just substitute Hird's name for Matthews and you are supporting my argument that Hird had absolutely no idea about what supps the players were injected with. So again I ask you - why did he repeatedly claim to be certain nothing illegal was taken? Isn't it a reasonable assumption that when he repeatedly made those claims most people would think he had to be involved in someway if he had this knowledge?. Otherwise he should have just said something similar to what Matthews said (or Ian Robson) and just say he didn't know whether they were legal or not. I can only assume he didn't want to di that because he would probably have lost the players. Which means he really was caught between a rock and a hard place..

I can only repeat, both Hird & Dank "claimed" publicly that "the truth will come out", "we have the the evidence to clear the players", those two keep saying. Nothing is / has been forthcoming. What can be more damaging for these two when they continiously fail to "produce / present the evidence" Unfortunately this sorry saga will not be over for quite a while to come, and I an refering to James Hirds' health.

Yes but why did Hird ever believe that? Read the CAS decision (very short) - blind Freddy could see that at best the players were taking a monumental risk. The other comments are right - almost from day 1 Hird should have resigned and advised the players to all take the deal or press ahead with extreme caution, and to not make decisions as one block like they did. Instead he wanted to keep his job with no loss of pay (hence the French holiday) and cling on to some fantasy that notwithstanding the shoddy protocols he oversaw that the players would somehow be vindicated. Even IF the players were vindicated in the end the honourable thing to do was walk from the job immediate because he was at fault for putting everyone through an investigation, let alone one leading to suspension. The biggest blunders here by Hird were in his initial response, and also in trying to spread the blame. Did the AFL employ Dank did they? Hird seems like a nice guy but he was out of his depth medically and legally, and it looks like he was badly advised by those close to him - he needed someone to put their arm around him and tell him to resign which would have been short term pain but he possibly could have made it back into the system later on (ala the Cronulla coach). He just needed to say he stuffed up, he got it wrong by employing the wrong person and not properly monitoring that person - he meant well but stuffed up. People would have copped that a lot better than how this has played out.

The players have a responsibility as well - yes they were young and easily influenced but nevertheless the onus is also them to ask questions and to check, and to be held accountable for what is being injected into their bodies. Also the players should have taken the first deal offered - pushing on was reckless. Hird's old man is way off. Hird did employ Dank without doing proper due diligence, and he didn't put in effective protocols - he tried to but didn't. Poor judgement and poor management ended up with a bunch of players being banned, and all that is traceable back to James Hird whether his old man can accept that or not, and whether James accepts it or not. Read the CAS decision is all I can say.

The lack of clear governance at Essendon made it difficult to pin it on Hird. It was shambolic the way Essendon was run. But there's no doubt in my mind that Hird and Dank were in communication the entire time, with Hird being the impetus behind direction of the doping programme. Just look at the text messages. Thousands of them. They leave little doubt with regards to Hird's close involvement in the doping programme. Hird was warned by the AFL to stay away from peptides, but went ahead any way. Hird was warned by the club doctor at Essendon to suspend the programme but ignored him. Best case scenario is that Hird was completely derelict in his duties, and no control of the football programme, and is completely inept as an AFL head coach. Worst case scenario is that Hird was the driving force behind the push to implement a systematic doping programme at Essendon. Either way, he should never be allowed near a footy club ever again. Let's hope he keeps his end of the bargain and stays out of the limelight for the remainder of his days.

This has been a complex saga and difficult to follow but leaving aside any other issues as a mother I would be most upset to know that my son was being injected with unknown substances. There is something very creepy about a coach expecting young players to front up for injections as a way to get a playing and recovery edge over other teams especially when the coach is someone the young players admire, even hero-worship. Surely JH would have a problem if a coach insisted that one of his kids be part of such a scheme. As someone else here has said - it's not so much about 'guilty' and 'not-guilty' but more about ethical behaviour and duty of care to a group of what was essentially vulnerable (difficult to see fit young sportsman as vulnerable nevertheless I believe they are) young men. I accept that JH himself wasn't guilty of giving illegal substances to his players but by not checking exactly what was being injected in miniscule detail nor consulting a wide range of medical experts in the field nor looking closely at Dank was a serious derilction of his duty. I'm sure he now realises that which is probably a big reason for his crisis. Perhaps if he'd acknowledged his lack of judgement upfront and taken the fallout he'd be in a better place than he is now.

I know it's pointless debating this with you MF but if Hird didn't know, or didn't know enough, he damn well should have. It"s what you call leadership and responsibility - the buck stops with Hird.

And possibly respecting your son's supportive wife in her request for privacy to protect the family. Instead of ringing the wireless to air debunked conspiracy theories. And putting a target on your own back (runs in the family).

And possibly respecting your son's supportive wife in her request for privacy to protect the family. Instead of ringing the wireless to air debunked conspiracy theories. And putting a target on your own back (runs in the family).

MF, you have been told repeatedly the burden of proof is different to what is required in an Australian court of law.

Mikey What point are you making? The CEO will generally have to take responsibility for the club as a whole. In the case of HIrd, he has been accused of everything under the sun but was never issued with an infraction notice for contravening the AFL anti-doping code. He didn't engage Dank, nor was Dank part of the Football Department. To what extent did he oversee Dank, know about what Dank was doing? Leigh Matthews confirmed that the delineation between the football department and the high performance department, as existed at EFC, also existed at the Lions when he was there. He said straight out he would not have known what supplements the players were taking. Need I remind you that the Lions won three consecutive premierships and certainly pushed the envelop in their practices (legal or not, they gave themselves one of the greatest advantages any footy team could ever give themselves).

How much did HIrd know? What details are people expecting Hird to provide? He set the broad policy for the high performance department, and they ran with it. That's all that has emerged to date. Re Dank telling the truth - why didn't ASADA use its extensive powers to force Dank to come to interview? They never used those powers. Why?

MIkey Dank was placed on the Register of Findings (by ASADA), was issued an infraction notice and his case went to the AFL anti-doping tribunal. If Hird was the mastermind, as many on here want to believe, then why didn't ASADA place Hird's name in the Register of Findings, get issued an infraction notice and front the AFL anti-doping tribunal? ASADA interviewed Hird for hours and had access to all the texts that the AFL had collected. Is it reasonable to conclude that ASADA made the decision that Hird had not contravened the AFL anti-doping code?

Anon All that shows is how speculative the CAS decision was, it was based on pure speculation. No direct evidence has ever emerged that any Essendon player was administered TB4, and given the CAS determined that all 34 players were in on it, it's remarkable that not one single witness has ever emerged to confirm that TB4 was used.