Certified Legendary Thread Sympathy for *essendon - congratulations on '16 Wooden Spoon (RIP The Scales)

[blackshadow]

Hilarious stuff.

Greg Sheridanesque.

Hirdy the role model player - who was charged with bringing the game into disrepute.

What do you expect from one of the chief Hirdashian acolytes from Bomber blitz?

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

So when are * getting smashed by the tribunal, better be soon.

 

[numchuks]

Kool-Aid chugger gets his 15 minutes of fame...
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/james-hirds-essendon-story-has-yet-to-be-told-20150303-13sa71.html

I can't believe this was published in mainstream media.

So because Hirdy is a good bloke and looked in disbelief when the charges were laid, he should be given the benefit of the doubt and absconded of all culpability???

Despite the mountain of text msgs between him and Dank approving the drug program, and the texts between him and Evans about investing in the drugs company and riding the profits through to retirement.

What the hell.

 

[Jade]

Ok everyone I have a question and its to you all but I guess Jade is probably the best one to answer it.

Why is it when I talk to * fans, or read the point of view of * people (on the *board mostly) the over riding feeling is that they want the evidence that does exist and the people that do know what happed to disappear? They want this to go away! They want this to be written off as a bogus investigation! They want the truth hidden as long as the players are free to play!

I would hope that if this happened at our club, we would handle it differently. I would hope that we would do everything to find out what happened, who did wrong, what the players took (were given) what risk have the players been exposed to.
Importantly those that brought this scourge on my club to be punished, to be brought to justice and to be scorned in public forever. Take the punishment and move on. Would the rep of the club be tarnished? Absolutely! Would it recover? Maybe yes, maybe no. But at least the right thing will have been done!

If just one player gets sick, or has future issues because of this program the club will be forever seen as a disgrace WORLDWIDE! The fact that the club has openly stated that "we don't know exactly what the players were given" blows me away! This disgrace of a club NEEDS to take its medicine, and hat in hand apologize to its players, it's sponsors, it's members, and to this league!

Instead of quoting bits and pieces of your post, I'll try answer all of it at once, however if you think I missed something let me know and I'll go back.

Ok, your impression of Essendon fans. You'll you'll find there will be a wide variety of views on what has actually happened and what should happen going forward. Obviously, as is the case with most issues, the more extreme views tend to be a little louder. That, and confirmation bias tends to make opposition fans more attentive to those posts/statements that fit the narrative they most want to believe.

I can probably generalise the view of the more stable of the supporter base though; we don't know what happened, but we do want to know. Based on that information, we can then make decisions as to an appropriate action to take with the club, players and staff. In my opinion, that can be anything from no action at all against anyone, to a total cleanout of the club. Not a whole lot of point on speculating where on that spectrum of action I fall, because I've repeated over and over again I just don't know what happened at the moment.

Thus, I think it is fair to say that the major chunk of the supporter base does not want to 'cover up' evidence, they want to know what happened.

I will point out an interesting phenomena that has occurred though, and it is particularly visible on BigFooty, but I've seen it elsewhere as well. When this story first broke, my reaction, and I suspect the reaction of almost every EFC supporter, was something akin to 'holy s**t, what happened?'.

Of course the reaction from opposition supporters was the first to be, shall we say, hysterical? You know what I mean, wails of drug cheats, sack this person, jail this person etc etc all before any of us had the slightest idea what was going on. And of course, the media in this country, ambulance chasers that they are, jumped on it and fed the beast that was going to sell papers, switch TVs on, and have mouses clicking in overdrive all over the country. I dare say Chief is quietly a happy bloody man as a result of this saga.

As a result, the wider football community, and I dare say population as a whole had made a decision on the guilt of those at the club almost immediately.

When you sit there and think about it, its bloody ridiculous. The body charged with investigating and prosecuting a case has only just completed that NOW, many years after the general public had made up its mind that Essendon were GUILTY.

Now I point this out in order to explain some of what you see. What this did to Essendon supporters, was immediately put them on the defensive, defending accusations, poor opinions etc etc. It's been quite a while since I visited the HTB, but make no mistake, the single most utterly stupid people and/or comments that I've seen on this debacle so far have been there, those spouting that they KNOW who is guilty and why. On the odd occasion I've genuinely seen comments that have made me stop and think, in all seriousness, this person is quite literally mentally handicapped. And I don't mean in that off the cuff way we can sometimes call each other stupid, I mean in the you seriously have mental deficiencies kind of way.

Now of course, we've had a few of those ourselves, who shall remain nameless. People that are so blinded by their allegiance to the club that they too make the serious error of assuming they KNOW what happened and then proceed to spruik that fact as loudly as they can. I have, and continue to work hard to correct those people as much as I correct opposition supporters.

I've been guilty of the defensive behavior myself on occasion. It's hard not to sometimes. But I do try and repeat the same thing, that whilst I will correct/defend/refute/ridicule idiocy, the reality is I, like you don't really know what happened.

Now, you mentioned that if it had happened at your club, you would hope that you'd have handled it differently. This comment, and comments like it, I've always found a bit strange. Because surely common sense tells you that any other supporter base would have acted in the same way that ours has. In fact I'd go as far as to say definitely would. Of course you'd WANT your club not to be guilty, and confirmation bias would drive you to look for the information that supports that, and you would defend yourselves from what you perceived as either ill-informed, or flat out wrong statements and accusations.

I can certainly tell you, that most of your supporter base (and this would apply to any other club), would NOT be screaming to 'just take the punishment' until you knew for sure that you were guilty. I'm sorry if you don't agree with that, but that is exactly how anyone else would have acted.

I will concede one thing though, very few coaches other than James Hird would have survived this far. Now I did start a thread on the HTB many moons ago (back when I thought SOME sense could be talked into them) trying to point out why this is. It's not a cult, its just the particular circumstances surrounding Hird make him a little bit more revered than players/coaches elsewhere are. The obvious retort as a North fan is to point to Carey, but there is a distinct difference there that you do tend to gloss over - you all knew Carey was a bit of a s**t of a bloke and loved him anyway, that has never been the case with Hird.

Assumption is the biggest driver of hysteria in this debacle. You may notice, if you read much of my posting, that I will consistently, even annoyingly point out and ridicule an assumption when I see it. And to be honest, it happens so often I could never possibly get to every one. I do it because it dawned on me very early on that people assuming that they know things that really, they don't, is what drove the levels of hysteria to lynch mob levels.

Now there are some further details relating to the substances taken that I am aware of but can't post here, however I'm more than happy to PM the cliffs if you'd like to know so long as you don't put it up here.

I hope this answers some of your question, now where's the sympathy bitch for this ****ing long post....

 

[Hojuman]

Jade......even Wayne knew he could be a " s**t " of a bloke sometimes.
He nearly destroyed us all after the Kellie Stevens incident.

But......he admitted his mistakes and took his medicine.

Hird as far as we are ALL concerned has never told the truth and taken the legal goobledygook route to sweep everything under the carpet.
Hence the vitriol directed against him and your club. Simple really.

 

[LuvtheKangas]

TL;dr x 100 (not you, Hojuman)

 

[Phillyroo]

Instead of quoting bits and pieces of your post, I'll try answer all of it at once, however if you think I missed something let me know and I'll go back.

Ok, your impression of Essendon fans. You'll you'll find there will be a wide variety of views on what has actually happened and what should happen going forward. Obviously, as is the case with most issues, the more extreme views tend to be a little louder. That, and confirmation bias tends to make opposition fans more attentive to those posts/statements that fit the narrative they most want to believe.

I can probably generalise the view of the more stable of the supporter base though; we don't know what happened, but we do want to know. Based on that information, we can then make decisions as to an appropriate action to take with the club, players and staff. In my opinion, that can be anything from no action at all against anyone, to a total cleanout of the club. Not a whole lot of point on speculating where on that spectrum of action I fall, because I've repeated over and over again I just don't know what happened at the moment.

Thus, I think it is fair to say that the major chunk of the supporter base does not want to 'cover up' evidence, they want to know what happened.

I will point out an interesting phenomena that has occurred though, and it is particularly visible on BigFooty, but I've seen it elsewhere as well. When this story first broke, my reaction, and I suspect the reaction of almost every EFC supporter, was something akin to 'holy s**t, what happened?'.

Of course the reaction from opposition supporters was the first to be, shall we say, hysterical? You know what I mean, wails of drug cheats, sack this person, jail this person etc etc all before any of us had the slightest idea what was going on. And of course, the media in this country, ambulance chasers that they are, jumped on it and fed the beast that was going to sell papers, switch TVs on, and have mouses clicking in overdrive all over the country. I dare say Chief is quietly a happy bloody man as a result of this saga.

As a result, the wider football community, and I dare say population as a whole had made a decision on the guilt of those at the club almost immediately.

When you sit there and think about it, its bloody ridiculous. The body charged with investigating and prosecuting a case has only just completed that NOW, many years after the general public had made up its mind that Essendon were GUILTY.

Now I point this out in order to explain some of what you see. What this did to Essendon supporters, was immediately put them on the defensive, defending accusations, poor opinions etc etc. It's been quite a while since I visited the HTB, but make no mistake, the single most utterly stupid people and/or comments that I've seen on this debacle so far have been there, those spouting that they KNOW who is guilty and why. On the odd occasion I've genuinely seen comments that have made me stop and think, in all seriousness, this person is quite literally mentally handicapped. And I don't mean in that off the cuff way we can sometimes call each other stupid, I mean in the you seriously have mental deficiencies kind of way.

Now of course, we've had a few of those ourselves, who shall remain nameless. People that are so blinded by their allegiance to the club that they too make the serious error of assuming they KNOW what happened and then proceed to spruik that fact as loudly as they can. I have, and continue to work hard to correct those people as much as I correct opposition supporters.

I've been guilty of the defensive behavior myself on occasion. It's hard not to sometimes. But I do try and repeat the same thing, that whilst I will correct/defend/refute/ridicule idiocy, the reality is I, like you don't really know what happened.

Now, you mentioned that if it had happened at your club, you would hope that you'd have handled it differently. This comment, and comments like it, I've always found a bit strange. Because surely common sense tells you that any other supporter base would have acted in the same way that ours has. In fact I'd go as far as to say definitely would. Of course you'd WANT your club not to be guilty, and confirmation bias would drive you to look for the information that supports that, and you would defend yourselves from what you perceived as either ill-informed, or flat out wrong statements and accusations.

I can certainly tell you, that most of your supporter base (and this would apply to any other club), would NOT be screaming to 'just take the punishment' until you knew for sure that you were guilty. I'm sorry if you don't agree with that, but that is exactly how anyone else would have acted.

I will concede one thing though, very few coaches other than James Hird would have survived this far. Now I did start a thread on the HTB many moons ago (back when I thought SOME sense could be talked into them) trying to point out why this is. It's not a cult, its just the particular circumstances surrounding Hird make him a little bit more revered than players/coaches elsewhere are. The obvious retort as a North fan is to point to Carey, but there is a distinct difference there that you do tend to gloss over - you all knew Carey was a bit of a s**t of a bloke and loved him anyway, that has never been the case with Hird.

Assumption is the biggest driver of hysteria in this debacle. You may notice, if you read much of my posting, that I will consistently, even annoyingly point out and ridicule an assumption when I see it. And to be honest, it happens so often I could never possibly get to every one. I do it because it dawned on me very early on that people assuming that they know things that really, they don't, is what drove the levels of hysteria to lynch mob levels.

Now there are some further details relating to the substances taken that I am aware of but can't post here, however I'm more than happy to PM the cliffs if you'd like to know so long as you don't put it up here.

I hope this answers some of your question, now where's the sympathy bitch for this ****ing long post....

Ok firstly wow.
Secondly thanks.
As I've said more than once, imo u have really picked up your game here. I didn't tag you in my long rambling "question" (I believe the question was at the start, and what followed was the rambling bit) to accuse you of the phenomenon to which I speak. Rather to get your take on it. Generally speaking the word "Yep" comes to mind when reading most of your reply. However I take issue with the following.... The club still stand by the fact, unless I am mistaken, that they don't know what was taken. Yet they absolutely deny that rules were broken. The people at the centre of this are shady (at best) and the * people I talk to (not you) say Im so happy Dank is digging his heals in, or good on Charter for changing his story, or self reporting was the biggest mistake we made, or the investigation was illegal......

Also your point about any club and its fans reacting the same way.... Well if that is the case and you are right.... I am greatly disappointed! It smacks of petulant horrible behaviour, and if my club avoided facing up to charges the "right" way if they were brought upon it, I would not be a member of that club any longer! I just got 3 letters in the mail to say that my membership instalments were declined, all the money I have I have put into legal costs so that my children live with me and they are safe... Until my next pay I will battle through, paying money to be a member of my club is a tough financial slog for me, and unless we present ourselves with the upmost integrity I would keep the money and not be part of something that I wasn't proud of!

Ps send through the info to my inbox,
Hahaha

 

[bengrina]

How do I block * jade?.

 

[Devington]

Cheers for taking the time to post that Jade .

When you sit there and think about it, its bloody ridiculous. The body charged with investigating and prosecuting a case has only just completed that NOW, many years after the general public had made up its mind that Essendon were GUILTY.

I think above, and opinions on Hird in general, are the two biggest sticking points you'll find between Essendon supporters and others.
It sucks a boatload of wang that it's taken so long (and I hope that there is an audit after the fact to see what went right/wrong internally at ASADA), but it's kind of understandable IMO. ASADA was arguably not originally equipped to handle a case this big (add in NRL as well), the most important person involved has refused point blank to co-operate, the AFL arguably attempted to shove their fist elbow deep into ASADA and use them like a puppet (which I'm convinced has had a negative effect on every aspect of the investigation), there have been leaks from almost every party, there has been legal action taken (and threats of legal action, which I would imagine they would have to turn some of their attention to in case it eventuated). And while it sucks that some of the rest of the competition had already made their minds up (which I'd argue is only a vocal portion of the whole), ASADA can't really do anything about that, AFAIK there is very little information they can release in terms of active investigations (the whole AOD9604 thing is bloody weird though, would love to know what the * happened there).

As for the different shape and sizes of Essendon supporters, I imagine it would be a pretty similar case if it was any other club, with maybe a few different nuances and factors that might have changed the way it's played out (wealth of the club, how long it had been in the competition, recent success, coach, board members (I'm looking at Little!)).

Overall it really is a shitty situation, and I do have some legit sympathy for the supporters (certainly more than I do the club, and to an extent the players). Can't wait for the books to be written about this (with one or two exceptions)!

Oh, and I'd love a PM, nothing beats unverifiable unrepeatable gossip!~

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Alright I'll join in the pm bandwagon again.

 

[Jade]

Let me finish watching my movie and I'll hit you up.

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Let me finish watching my movie and I'll hit you up.

Breaking bad or Debbie does Dallas. Me, house of cards.

 

[Nate7]

Breaking bad or Debbie does Dallas. Me, house of cards.

Doss does Dank

 

[Phillyroo]

Doss does Dank

Hahaha top drawer

 

[Jade]

Breaking bad or Debbie does Dallas. Me, house of cards.

Attack of the Clones believe it or not...

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Attack of the Clones believe it or not...

Underrated film, the new rebels isn't that bad, anyway.

Sympathy for *.

 

[astrovic]

Kool-Aid chugger gets his 15 minutes of fame...
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/james-hirds-essendon-story-has-yet-to-be-told-20150303-13sa71.html

I can't believe this was published in mainstream media.

The donialism is strong in that one.

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

The donialism is strong in that one.

The leader is good, the leader is great.

 

[Jade]

The leader is good, the leader is great.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na leader...

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na leader...

You probably beans of the leader don't you*.

 

[MaddAdam]

Hah, they just went and got the old drunk Sheedy back.

 

[Ohhh Errol]

just when you thought it...who are we kidding, anything is possible with the clowns.

 

[Jay-Z]

Ok, your impression of Essendon fans. You'll you'll find there will be a wide variety of views on what has actually happened and what should happen going forward. Obviously, as is the case with most issues, the more extreme views tend to be a little louder. That, and confirmation bias tends to make opposition fans more attentive to those posts/statements that fit the narrative they most want to believe.

Good start. This is all true.

I can probably generalise the view of the more stable of the supporter base though; we don't know what happened, but we do want to know. Based on that information, we can then make decisions as to an appropriate action to take with the club, players and staff.

Unfortunately, the "more stable" group of your supporter base (while growing recently) has been, for the majority of this saga, a small minority. Hence your next paragraph...

Thus, I think it is fair to say that the major chunk of the supporter base does not want to 'cover up' evidence, they want to know what happened.

...is codswallop.

I will point out an interesting phenomena that has occurred though, and it is particularly visible on BigFooty, but I've seen it elsewhere as well. When this story first broke, my reaction, and I suspect the reaction of almost every EFC supporter, was something akin to 'holy s**t, what happened?'.

Of course the reaction from opposition supporters was the first to be, shall we say, hysterical? You know what I mean, wails of drug cheats, sack this person, jail this person etc etc all before any of us had the slightest idea what was going on.

Here, I think you have fallen into your own trap. First of all, you have taken the extremists views of the HTB board and painted the wider general public with that brush. The HTB board does not even represent a good sample of big footy (which in turn does not represent a good sample of the general footy public). Secondly, the natural reaction on sites like BigFooty when any scandal breaks is to assume it is true and make fun of it and the club/people affected. While obviously, that is not very nice for the supporters of the club affected by the scandal, it is just the way things work around here. We are all (most of us) here for a bit of fun and it's often lots of fun to poke fun at teams we don't like. Again, I would not assume from this that everyone believes 100% that the scandal is true.

Now, you mentioned that if it had happened at your club, you would hope that you'd have handled it differently. This comment, and comments like it, I've always found a bit strange. Because surely common sense tells you that any other supporter base would have acted in the same way that ours has. In fact I'd go as far as to say definitely would.

While we will never truly KNOW the answer to this. I disagree with your assumption that all clubs would react the same. Your *club has (and always has) had a certain arrogance to it that is unique to *you and perhaps 2 or 3 other clubs. This arrogance caused a larger than normal reaction of "we did nothing wrong" both from the morons running the *joint and from *your supporters. The other effect of this arrogance was that it seemed to prolong the period of time most * supporters spent in *donial.

I will concede one thing though, very few coaches other than James Hird would have survived this far. Now I did start a thread on the HTB many moons ago (back when I thought SOME sense could be talked into them) trying to point out why this is. It's not a cult, its just the particular circumstances surrounding Hird make him a little bit more revered than players/coaches elsewhere are. The obvious retort as a North fan is to point to Carey, but there is a distinct difference there that you do tend to gloss over - you all knew Carey was a bit of a s**t of a bloke and loved him anyway, that has never been the case with Hird.

Now this was perhaps my favorite bit of your post (novel?). Firstly, we all know that if James Hird's football career had gone the way of say Dean Wallis or any other * hack from the 90's that he would be long gone and at least you've (kinda) acknowledged that. However, the fact that he was a great player or even that he granddad was a player/president should have never entered anyone's mind when deciding whether he deserved to be sacked for this. Your belief that he is a little bit more revered than anyone else just points to the general "we're special" attitude of your *club. It is a cult, pure and simple. A cult that has taken many good people down with it along the way and left it's leader still standing claiming *he is innocent and has been mistreated.

Obviously, as you have alluded to, North fans have a little experience in this area. Where you're wrong is in your assumption that *hird is (or was) a little more special to * than Carey was to us. Despite the fact he didn't have the squeaky clean reputation of *sir *james, Carey was equally worshiped by the club and the fans prior to the scandal of 2002. However, when that happened, Carey very quickly put his hand up, the club did the right thing and we, as the supporters (though it may have taken a bit of time) accepted it was the right thing to do. The ironic thing in all of this is that it turns out *hird is even MORE of a s**t bloke than Carey, though I'm sure you'll disagree.

 

[Phillyroo]

Good start. This is all true.



Unfortunately, the "more stable" group of your supporter base (while growing recently) has been, for the majority of this saga, a small minority. Hence your next paragraph...

...is codswallop.


Here, I think you have fallen into your own trap. First of all, you have taken the extremists views of the HTB board and painted the wider general public with that brush. The HTB board does not even represent a good sample of big footy (which in turn does not represent a good sample of the general footy public). Secondly, the natural reaction on sites like BigFooty when any scandal breaks is to assume it is true and make fun of it and the club/people affected. While obviously, that is not very nice for the supporters of the club affected by the scandal, it is just the way things work around here. We are all (most of us) here for a bit of fun and it's often lots of fun to poke fun at teams we don't like. Again, I would not assume from this that everyone believes 100% that the scandal is true.


While we will never truly KNOW the answer to this. I disagree with your assumption that all clubs would react the same. Your *club has (and always has) had a certain arrogance to it that is unique to *you and perhaps 2 or 3 other clubs. This arrogance caused a larger than normal reaction of "we did nothing wrong" both from the morons running the *joint and from *your supporters. The other effect of this arrogance was that it seemed to prolong the period of time most * supporters spent in *donial.


Now this was perhaps my favorite bit of your post (novel?). Firstly, we all know that if James Hird's football career had gone the way of say Dean Wallis or any other * hack from the 90's that he would be long gone and at least you've (kinda) acknowledged that. However, the fact that he was a great player or even that he granddad was a player/president should have never entered anyone's mind when deciding whether he deserved to be sacked for this. Your belief that he is a little bit more revered than anyone else just points to the general "we're special" attitude of your *club. It is a cult, pure and simple. A cult that has taken many good people down with it along the way and left it's leader still standing claiming *he is innocent and has been mistreated.

Obviously, as you have alluded to, North fans have a little experience in this area. Where you're wrong is in your assumption that *hird is (or was) a little more special to * than Carey was to us. Despite the fact he didn't have the squeaky clean reputation of *sir *james, Carey was equally worshiped by the club and the fans prior to the scandal of 2002. However, when that happened, Carey very quickly put his hand up, the club did the right thing and we, as the supporters (though it may have taken a bit of time) accepted it was the right thing to do. The ironic thing in all of this is that it turns out *hird is even MORE of a s**t bloke than Carey, though I'm sure you'll disagree.

POTY

 

[DesertRoo]

Instead of quoting bits and pieces of your post, I'll try answer all of it at once, however if you think I missed something let me know and I'll go back.

Ok, your impression of Essendon fans. You'll you'll find there will be a wide variety of views on what has actually happened and what should happen going forward. Obviously, as is the case with most issues, the more extreme views tend to be a little louder. That, and confirmation bias tends to make opposition fans more attentive to those posts/statements that fit the narrative they most want to believe.

I can probably generalise the view of the more stable of the supporter base though; we don't know what happened, but we do want to know. Based on that information, we can then make decisions as to an appropriate action to take with the club, players and staff. In my opinion, that can be anything from no action at all against anyone, to a total cleanout of the club. Not a whole lot of point on speculating where on that spectrum of action I fall, because I've repeated over and over again I just don't know what happened at the moment.

Thus, I think it is fair to say that the major chunk of the supporter base does not want to 'cover up' evidence, they want to know what happened.

I will point out an interesting phenomena that has occurred though, and it is particularly visible on BigFooty, but I've seen it elsewhere as well. When this story first broke, my reaction, and I suspect the reaction of almost every EFC supporter, was something akin to 'holy s**t, what happened?'.

Of course the reaction from opposition supporters was the first to be, shall we say, hysterical? You know what I mean, wails of drug cheats, sack this person, jail this person etc etc all before any of us had the slightest idea what was going on. And of course, the media in this country, ambulance chasers that they are, jumped on it and fed the beast that was going to sell papers, switch TVs on, and have mouses clicking in overdrive all over the country. I dare say Chief is quietly a happy bloody man as a result of this saga.

As a result, the wider football community, and I dare say population as a whole had made a decision on the guilt of those at the club almost immediately.

When you sit there and think about it, its bloody ridiculous. The body charged with investigating and prosecuting a case has only just completed that NOW, many years after the general public had made up its mind that Essendon were GUILTY.

Now I point this out in order to explain some of what you see. What this did to Essendon supporters, was immediately put them on the defensive, defending accusations, poor opinions etc etc. It's been quite a while since I visited the HTB, but make no mistake, the single most utterly stupid people and/or comments that I've seen on this debacle so far have been there, those spouting that they KNOW who is guilty and why. On the odd occasion I've genuinely seen comments that have made me stop and think, in all seriousness, this person is quite literally mentally handicapped. And I don't mean in that off the cuff way we can sometimes call each other stupid, I mean in the you seriously have mental deficiencies kind of way.

Now of course, we've had a few of those ourselves, who shall remain nameless. People that are so blinded by their allegiance to the club that they too make the serious error of assuming they KNOW what happened and then proceed to spruik that fact as loudly as they can. I have, and continue to work hard to correct those people as much as I correct opposition supporters.

I've been guilty of the defensive behavior myself on occasion. It's hard not to sometimes. But I do try and repeat the same thing, that whilst I will correct/defend/refute/ridicule idiocy, the reality is I, like you don't really know what happened.

Now, you mentioned that if it had happened at your club, you would hope that you'd have handled it differently. This comment, and comments like it, I've always found a bit strange. Because surely common sense tells you that any other supporter base would have acted in the same way that ours has. In fact I'd go as far as to say definitely would. Of course you'd WANT your club not to be guilty, and confirmation bias would drive you to look for the information that supports that, and you would defend yourselves from what you perceived as either ill-informed, or flat out wrong statements and accusations.

I can certainly tell you, that most of your supporter base (and this would apply to any other club), would NOT be screaming to 'just take the punishment' until you knew for sure that you were guilty. I'm sorry if you don't agree with that, but that is exactly how anyone else would have acted.

I will concede one thing though, very few coaches other than James Hird would have survived this far. Now I did start a thread on the HTB many moons ago (back when I thought SOME sense could be talked into them) trying to point out why this is. It's not a cult, its just the particular circumstances surrounding Hird make him a little bit more revered than players/coaches elsewhere are. The obvious retort as a North fan is to point to Carey, but there is a distinct difference there that you do tend to gloss over - you all knew Carey was a bit of a s**t of a bloke and loved him anyway, that has never been the case with Hird.

Assumption is the biggest driver of hysteria in this debacle. You may notice, if you read much of my posting, that I will consistently, even annoyingly point out and ridicule an assumption when I see it. And to be honest, it happens so often I could never possibly get to every one. I do it because it dawned on me very early on that people assuming that they know things that really, they don't, is what drove the levels of hysteria to lynch mob levels.

Now there are some further details relating to the substances taken that I am aware of but can't post here, however I'm more than happy to PM the cliffs if you'd like to know so long as you don't put it up here.

I hope this answers some of your question, now where's the sympathy bitch for this ****ing long post....

Nah,
*hird was dodgy as * during his playing days. You just like chugging his goo and can't admit it.