"Jobe Watson never cheated" - Hird

[takenoterock]

That is incredibly damning of Watson.

Presumably it's meant to paint him as a poor innocent kid, but gee that doesn't do him any favours.


It also smacks the narrative about his wonderful leadership out of the park.

That is incredibly damning of Watson.

Presumably it's meant to paint him as a poor innocent kid, but gee that doesn't do him any favours.


It also smacks the narrative about his wonderful leadership out of the park.

It proves that it is impossible that he had TB4.

 

[GreyCrow]

It proves that it is impossible that he had TB4.

“My memory of Thymosin in my … use is not as clear as what it is with AOD9604,’’ he tells Walker in his interview. “Thymosin is in my mind a bit more sketchy. I probably was being given it by him but I can’t be sure it was.’’

 

[takenoterock]

Different to TB4

 

[GreyCrow]

Different to TB4

And you know this how? Jobe doesn't even know

 

[floki]

• actovegin
• unspecified amino acids
• unspecified multi-vitamins
• AOD-9604 creams
• AOD-9604 injections
• cerebrolysin
• colostrum
• hexarelin
  
• lactaway
• lube-all-plus
• melatonin
• melanotan II
• TA-65
• thymosin beta 4
• traumeel
• tribulus

If only they kept the records as to who took what and when, plausible deniability is such a terrible defense.

 

[takenoterock]

And you know this how? Jobe doesn't even know

Read the article

 

[GreyCrow]

Read the article

I did. Now show me where it was conclusively proved Jobe or the Essendon players didn't take TB4. While you are at it give all the paperwork you have to the AFL and ASADA.

 

[takenoterock]

I did. Now show me where it was conclusively proved Jobe or the Essendon players didn't take TB4. While you are at it give all the paperwork you have to the AFL and ASADA.

Show me where they did

 

[takenoterock]

I did. Now show me where it was conclusively proved Jobe or the Essendon players didn't take TB4. While you are at it give all the paperwork you have to the AFL and ASADA.

Watson went on to recall a conversation he had with Dank about Thymosin. “Iwould have been in his office about toreceive an injection and we were talking to him. Perhaps he said, ‘I’m going to give you some Thymosin’ and I would have asked, ‘Well, what’s Thymosin, what does it do?’. And he said, ‘Well, there’s actually two types of Thymosin. One’s illegal and banned that you can’t have and thenthere’s one that’s not banned that youcan’.’’

Walker: “OK, so from your perspectiveJobe, had you been administered with Thymosin, it was always your understanding that according to the description given to you by Stephen Dank, it was the permitted kind?

Watson: “Yes.’’

 

[Gavin Excell]

• The Australian
• 12:00AM November 12, 2016

It was a year ago, on the 28th floor of the Deutsche Bank Place building overlooking Sydney Harbour, that Jobe Watson was formally asked the question that has plagued his conscience throughout the Essendon drug scandal: could he have done more to stop it?

The Essendon captain knew what the three tribunal members of the Court of Arbitration for Sport sitting in judgment of him wanted to hear. “I guess in hindsight you always think that you could have done more,’’ he began. He also knew the honest answer, the one he eventually gave, was quite different.

“At the time, it was the furthest thing in my mind that anyone would try and deliberately inject us to cheat,’’ he told the hearing. “When I think back on it, I think what a ridiculous thing for someone to want to do. It just didn’t make any more sense in my mind then, that I’d need to ask more questions. Why would anyone try and dope us without our knowledge?’’

What happened at Essendon has no precedent. There is not another documented case of a rogue sports scientist doping a team of professional footballers against their will after providing them with bogus assurances, in writing, about the substances he planned to give them. These circumstances and the four years of scandal they produced were yesterday distilled into a final, wretched decision by Watson to relinquish the Brownlow Medal he won in Essendon’s season of shame.

Watson’s announcement that he will hand back the medal pre-empts what was widely seen as the only decision open to the AFL Commission; to rescind the medal he was awarded in the same year that he and his teammates signed up to a reckless supplements program that according to CAS, included subcutaneous injections of a banned peptide, Thymosin Beta 4.

How can an award for the competition’s fairest and best player remain around the neck of a man found guilty of taking a banned substance in the season he won it?

The governing body of the AFL will meet on Tuesday to decide what to do with the 2012 medal before it can close the book on the game’s most destructive scandal.

Before it does, however, Watson deserves something else, something he did not receive when the AFL tribunal cleared all Essendon players of wrongdoing or when a CAS panel judged them all guilty on much the same evidence; proper consideration of the individual case against him.

Watson has twice recounted what happened at Essendon; to the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and AFL investigators more than three years ago and last November to the CAS hearing that found Watson and 33 of his teammates guilty of having taken a banned substance.

After gaining access to transcripts of Watson’s testimony before CAS, excerpts from his 2013 interview and the brief of evidence assembled by ASADA and the World Anti-Doping Agency against sports scientist Stephen Dank and the 34 players, The Weekend Australian can reveal the trials of Jobe Watson and why the AFL’s own senior counsel raised doubts about whether he was injected with TB4.

The doping case against Watson is as follows: He gave written consent, in February 2012, to be injected with a Thymosin peptide; he was injected by his own count between eight and 10 times throughout the 2012 season; he admitted during his ASADA interview to being injected with Thymosin; he didn’t consult with the club doctor, Bruce Reid, about the Thymosin injections; he was twice drug tested and didn’t declare any injections on his doping control forms.

If you accept, as CAS did, that the Thymosin peptide used by Dank at Essendon was Thymosin Beta 4, the case against Watson appears a slam dunk. Upon closer examination, it is far from it.

As Watson explained to the CAS hearing, he and other members of the player leadership group initiated a now notorious meeting in the Windy Hill auditorium where Dank, in the presence of his direct boss, former high-performance manager Dean Robinson, and club psychologist Jonah Oliver, gave a PowerPoint presentation about the substances he planned to give players to aid their recovery from football games.

According to Watson, the purpose of the meeting and the consent forms they signed after Dank’s presentation wasn’t to give licence to a secret, illegal drug regimen but the opposite; to ensure that whatever they were given was permitted under the World Anti-Doping Code and approved by the club’s medical staff. A meeting characterised by anti-doping authorities as a pivotal moment in a head-in-sand conspiracy was in fact a responsible step taken by the players, led by senior figures such as Watson and Mark McVeigh, to demand more information and assuage doubt about the substances.

“The players were concerned about receiving injections,’’ Watson told the CAS hearing. “We wanted to make sure that we were able to get some form of document that showed that all these injections were WADA and ASADA approved, that there was nothing that we were going to be given that was going to be harmful to us, and to put our minds at ease that the doctors, that everyone within the club knew what the supplements program was, why we were getting injections and also, that everything we were talking was legal and above board.’’

The players did not know, nor did they have any way of knowing that, in the words of ASADA investigator Aaron Walker, they were “subject to profoundly false assurances from those within positions of authority at Essendon’’ about the program they were signing up to.

Watson took his personal due diligence one step further. In his discussions with Dank, the sports scientist made clear that the most important substance in Watson’s supplement program would be AOD9604, an experimental growth hormone fragment that WADA added to the prohibited list only after its use at Essendon was exposed.

Armed with this information, Watson sought the opinion of Reid, the club’s senior medical officer, about AOD9604. Reid was sceptical about the efficacy of the substance but confirmed to ASADA that he approved its use.

Fatefully, Watson did not speak to Reid about Dank’s proposed use of Thymosin. When pressed to explain this discrepancy by WADA’s counsel Brent Rychener, Watson said that even though he consented to being treated with Thymosin, he didn’t expect it to be a “major part’’ of his program.

Although Watson is counted by ASADA as one of six players who admitted to receiving Thymosin injections, he does not know whether he actually did. The transcript of Watson’s May 2013 interview with ASADA and the AFL which contains his so-called admission underscores the uncertainty he felt back then, at a time before Thymosin Beta 4 emerged as the key substance in the Essendon doping story.

“My memory of Thymosin in my … use is not as clear as what it is with AOD9604,’’ he tells Walker in his interview. “Thymosin is in my mind a bit more sketchy. I probably was being given it by him but I can’t be sure it was.’’

Watson went on to recall a conversation he had with Dank about Thymosin. “I would have been in his office about to receive an injection and we were talking to him. Perhaps he said, ‘I’m going to give you some Thymosin’ and I would have asked, ‘Well, what’s Thymosin, what does it do?’. And he said, ‘Well, there’s actually two types of Thymosin. One’s illegal and banned that you can’t have and then there’s one that’s not banned that you can’.’’

Walker: “OK, so from your perspective Jobe, had you been administered with Thymosin, it was always your understanding that according to the description given to you by Stephen Dank, it was the permitted kind?

Watson: “Yes.’’

Watson provided further evidence about being given a Thymosin injection when he and other players were receiving hyperbaric treatment at a South Yarra clinic in preparation for the Anzac Day match. The injection he describes was intramuscular, rather than subcutaneous, and was almost certainly Cerebrolysin, a peptide permitted in sport. Neither ASADA nor WADA alleges that any player was given a banned substance at the South Yarra clinic.

WADA did not accept Watson’s recollection about Dank being aware of different kinds of Thymosin. In an appendix to its confidential appeal brief to CAS, WADA urges caution about Watson’s evidence on this point. “The most likely explanation for Watson’s claim is that it is a reconstructed memory, based on coverage of the supplements scandal in the media.’’ It is not the only time the veracity of Watson’s evidence is questioned.

The critical timeline relied upon to prove the doping case against Watson and his teammates shifted between the unsuccessful case ASADA ran before the AFL tribunal at the end of 2014 and the case WADA successfully ran before CAS a year later. In the AFL tribunal case, the players were injected with TB4 by Dank, from clear vials, from February onwards. In the case before CAS, the players were doped from bronze vials after May.

The reframed case was sufficiently strong to convince the CAS panel but presents difficulties when applied to Watson’s circumstances. Watson told ASADA in 2013 he received his first injection from Dank, a vitamin C infusion, in the week before the first round of the 2012 season and that he stopped receiving injections in May. This meant Watson’s exposure to Dank began and ended before the sports scientist received the only supply of Thymosin Beta 4 verified by ASADA and WADA’s investigations.

The timing of Watson’s treatment by Dank also puts his failure to declare injections on his doping control forms in a benign light. Watson was drug tested on January 23, 2012, two months before he received his first injection from Dank, and again on July 12, 2012, two months after he received his last injection. At the time of both his drug tests he had nothing to declare. Like all 34 players, his failure to declare injections counted against him in the CAS judgment.

The chink in Watson’s story is a text message sent by Dank to the Essendon captain on July 4, 2012 to tell him he had forgotten to have his shot. Watson’s response, also by text, reads: “We’ll do it tomorrow.’’ When questioned about this by Rychener, Watson was emphatic. “I didn’t get that shot.’’ Watson’s testimony is that, by that stage of the season, he had lost faith in Dank’s program, was no longer receiving injections and was fobbing off the sports scientist.

Watson’s evidence about this was tested by CAS panel chairman Michael Beloff QC.

Beloff: “Why say ‘we’ll do it tomorrow’ if by that stage you’d lost faith in the program? I’m not understanding.’’

Watson: “Because he had been employed by the club, he’d received a glowing sort of recommendation from the head of fitness. I didn’t want to come out and say ‘I don’t believe in your program any more’. I was more inclined to just not say anything to him about it but I didn’t think what he was doing was working.

“There was no method of keeping records. He wasn’t a details oriented sort of person. He would just be there at the club one minute and then he’d be gone, so there was no sort of structure about how he operated.’’

Beloff: “I’m more interested in a sense about how you operated.’’

CAS did not weigh the strength of the doping case against any individual Essendon player. Once convinced that Dank used Thymosin Beta 4 at Essendon, a majority of the panel was willing to accept WADA’s argument that, because Dank described Thymosin as the “cornerstone’’ of his regimen, all 34 players must have received at least one incriminating shot of TB4.

The AFL did not share WADA’s certainty. In his closing submission to the CAS hearing, AFL senior counsel Jeff Gleeson QC said the case could go either way but warned against looking for sense in Dank’s work.

“He is a person in whom the players placed considerable trust, and you might question why that was, but he really was like an unhinged backyard scientist,’’ Gleeson told the hearing. “He was erratic, he was dangerous and he’s the critical reason why you will at least hesitate to be comfortably satisfied that they received TB4.

“We as rational human beings assume rational, predictable, logical, conventional behaviour to a degree within a range. We need not or perhaps cannot assume that of Dank. He was, it seems, the sort of fellow who would range around in the medicine cupboard and give players whatever he decided might work on a whim.

“You might conclude from that, that it would be very difficult to resist the conclusion that at least some of them got TB4, because if you assume that he received it and he had it and he liked it, some of them would have. What about the problem that this inconsistent and erratic individual might not have given it to Jobe Watson?’’

CAS was unmoved by Gleeson’s submission. It found not only that Watson took Thymosin Beta 4, but also that Watson and his teammates were substantially at fault for what happened to them.

Watson yesterday made it clear that while he accepted the need to hand back his Brownlow, he didn’t accept the CAS judgment.

“One of the most frustrating elements of this entire process has been my belief that many of the decisions in this matter have been based on perception rather than evidence,’’ he said.

The club accepts that it was to blame, rather than the players, for what happened in 2012. This is why the club settled compensation claims bought by some of the 34 players and is working to resolve those claims still outstanding. Yet Watson, like his teammates, has paid an exorbitant price for his club’s epic folly. His team was banned from the 2013 finals series, he was banned for the entire 2016 season and he has all but lost four years of his AFL career.

Watson did not cheat and no one, not even CAS, truly knows whether he took a banned substance. Despite this, he is resigned to a final ignominy and another cruel injustice; becoming the first person in AFL history to win, then lose, a Brownlow Medal.

Tl dr
Cheat

 

[takenoterock]

Tl dr
Cheat

Wrong. Read the article

 

[GreyCrow]

Watson went on to recall a conversation he had with Dank about Thymosin. “Iwould have been in his office about toreceive an injection and we were talking to him. Perhaps he said, ‘I’m going to give you some Thymosin’ and I would have asked, ‘Well, what’s Thymosin, what does it do?’. And he said, ‘Well, there’s actually two types of Thymosin. One’s illegal and banned that you can’t have and thenthere’s one that’s not banned that youcan’.’’

Walker: “OK, so from your perspectiveJobe, had you been administered with Thymosin, it was always your understanding that according to the description given to you by Stephen Dank, it was the permitted kind?

Watson: “Yes.’’

Yes but you haven't proved. Your words proved. All you have is someones word. Both Jobe or Dank could have been lying. You really should have said '' to the best of my understanding Jobe Watson didn't take TB4''

 

[Lavender Bushranger]

It proves that it is impossible that he had TB4.

?

It talks of a captain that queried the legitimacy of a drugs program, yet did nothing to follow it through. He openly says, even though he was the leader of 34 guys and responsible for them as captain - he did nothing to follow up on a drugs program that none of them would have ever seen before.

He was told about several drugs he was getting, and was concerned enough to query one of them - but not others. Even though he was told one of them was banned?? And particularly one that he didn't get told the real name of!?

And then, he tries to tell the CAS that he didn't trust Dank and started fobbing him off and dodging him. Foir real?? This leader of men. This beacon of leadership. The great, magnificent Jobe Watson - has a problem with getting drugs injected into him, and doesn't do anything about it? Other than dodge the bloke that is giving them to him?

And what did he do to help his mates that were also getting the shots??


Seriously. This is pretty damning stuff to his case, and to his reputation.

 

[takenoterock]

Yes but you haven't proved. Your words proved. All you have is someones word. Both Jobe or Dank could have been lying. You really should have said '' to the best of my understanding Jobe Watson didn't take TB4''

The timing of Watson’s treatment by Dank also puts his failure to declare injections on his doping control forms in a benign light. Watson was drug tested on January 23, 2012, two months before he received his first injection from Dank, and again on July 12, 2012, two months after he received his last injection. At the time of both his drug tests he had nothing to declare. Like all 34 players, his failure to declare injections counted against him in the CAS judgment.

 

[Demon in Hell]

This is starting to give me the shits.

The form state you are required to list anything you had within the past 7 days. It also recommends to list anything you have had so that if something comes up later then you would be covered.

It is damning that not one of the 34 players listed any of the injections given by Dank, or his associates.

Watson could have, and should have, listed these injections. He didn't.

Complicit.

 

[Lavender Bushranger]

The timing of Watson’s treatment by Dank also puts his failure to declare injections on his doping control forms in a benign light. Watson was drug tested on January 23, 2012, two months before he received his first injection from Dank, and again on July 12, 2012, two months after he received his last injection. At the time of both his drug tests he had nothing to declare. Like all 34 players, his failure to declare injections counted against him in the CAS judgment.

I'd dare say his testimony alone is enough to ping him, if that article is anything to go by.

 

[freowho]

“One of the most frustrating elements of this entire process has been my belief that many of the decisions in this matter have been based on perception rather than evidence,’’ he said.

IMHO this is the most misunderstood part of the whole saga. It is not a court of law, it is a sporting code of conduct. Perception matters.
Imagine you are playing poker with your friends and one of them insists on holding their cards under the table. The other players all say if you don't hold your cards above the table we are not going to continue to let you play. Now no one can prove how many cards this player is holding but they are clearly in breach of the rules of the game.
I don't like people calling the Essendon players drug cheats because this has not been proven. But under the code it is the players responsibility to prove to WADA what they have been injected with and they have not been able to do this. They are clearly in breach of the code and deserved their suspension. They were also clearly naive and misled by the club and I do feel sorry for them. But until "they" can provide evidence of what they were injected with they will not be able to clear their names.

 

[stewie dew]

spot on freowho,

"What happened at Essendon has no precedent. There is not another documented case of a rogue sports scientist doping a team of professional footballers against their will after providing them with bogus assurances, in writing, about the substances he planned to give them. These circumstances and the four years of scandal they produced were yesterday distilled into a final, wretched decision by Watson to relinquish the Brownlow Medal he won in Essendon’s season of shame."

not one of them or club is chasing Dank? billion dollar game and this guy injects 34 players, no records, no accountability, hahaha classic

 

[lethalselbow]

"(Former Essendon sports scientist) Stephen Dank has never been found guilty of giving the players a performance enhancing drug and it’s wrong Jobe has to hand back the medal.

http://www.afl.com.au/news/2016-11-12/jobe-never-cheated-says-exbombers-coach-hird

Oh dear, sounds like poor James may have lost the plot.

In its Arbitral Award, the Panel found to its comfortable satisfaction that Clause 11.2 of the 2010 AFL Doping Code (use of a prohibited substance) has been violated and found by a majority that all players were significantly at fault.

Sounds like they were found guilty to me, Jimmy.

James Hird has lost the plot and lost respect from the football world. Wonder if all those banned substances and tanning substances that he took, went to his head? Rumour has it one of his heads kept on standing to attention at the wrong time... except in France.

 

[takenoterock]

This is starting to give me the shits.

The form state you are required to list anything you had within the past 7 days. It also recommends to list anything you have had so that if something comes up later then you would be covered.

It is damning that not one of the 34 players listed any of the injections given by Dank, or his associates.

Watson could have, and should have, listed these injections. He didn't.

Complicit.

He had nothing to declare. Plain and simple.

 

[Demon in Hell]

He had nothing to declare. Plain and simple.

Your new around here aren't you.

Welcome to the HTB.

Feel free to read each and every thread and post.

 

[Gavin Excell]

To summarise:

drug cheating architect Hird says complicit senior player Watson should be given some leeway

Essendon royalty right there in front of you

 

[Garlic muncher]

This is starting to give me the shits.

The form state you are required to list anything you had within the past 7 days. It also recommends to list anything you have had so that if something comes up later then you would be covered.

It is damning that not one of the 34 players listed any of the injections given by Dank, or his associates.

Watson could have, and should have, listed these injections. He didn't.

Complicit.

Show me where

 

[Big Sim is Back]

So chip is now outright reporting as a cold hard fact that

A) the entire Essendon doping program was the work of a rogue sport scientist who tricked 34 professional footballers into allowing him to shoot them up willy nilly with unrecorded drugs

B) Jobe did not cheat.

This narrative is such a dead frigging horse that it is all but fossilised and yet chip still flogs it with undiminished fervour.

He is a bigger goose than even Robbo.

 

[Spongebob]

Books don't sell themselves.