Senator Back and Di Natale had the most robust lines of questioning. Peris was a garbled mess sadly and McDevitt smelled blood when he talked to her, Madigan, well I can see why he has the word "mad" in his name.
A lot of what Back and Di Natale were going on was the general vibe of the whole thing, effectively that the punishment that these players have received was disproportionate, which is not the angle I would have taken, but if I did there were a few things that needed to be followed up on.
If we want to go on the ordeal that the players have been put through there are a few very important pieces. One that the joint investigation, legal, fine we've ascertained that, led to a culture of leaking and slander, where journalists were fed pieces of the information and were able to snipe at the club and players for the entire duration of the investigation. Ultimately it was the newspaper articles, many of which got the situation quite wrong, that made up McDevitt's knowledge base when he first started in the job and that is clear as day when you hear his initial pressers after moving forward with IN recommendations. Go back and listen he
Nor was he pressed on his appalling reasoning for changing his mind re: no significant fault, and actually no-one has properly pressed him on this. He came out guns blazing asking the players to "tell the truth and you could get a no significant fault reduction". There was an assumption there that the players had not told the truth, and yet ultimately their own testimony re: injections was the major evidence used to stitch them up. Having it both ways McDickhead.
Finally, and there was a lot more but this stuck out the most for me, when asked why TB4 was on the banned list, McDevitt said he would have to take that on notice and find out. He said a lot of things that really made his anti doping knowledge abysmally clear. He continued to talk about players with substances pumping through their bodies making them big and strong. Then asked about what the actual perfomance enhancement of TB4 he said recovery so you can "pump iron sooner". What a ****en joke this whole ****en thing is.
And now we have Hirdy in the paper saying that the players who got off had lied to ASADA. Here's an idea Hirdy, shut the **** up. I have backed you up on a lot of things and have put up with your truly abysmal personal PR campaign. I understand your angle, that the players who told the truth were the only ones found guilty and that it truly shit, but once again, you have chosen the absolute worst way to communicate this. If you are really going to start throwing grenades like these, which implies we have lying drug cheats playing for us while we are trying so desperately for a clean slate, then ****. right. off.