This opinion piece was posted on the SEN website on 19 July. It's very feasible. Apologies for the length of the article. I tried to trim it down but every sentence is gold. I don't know Mick Ellis but well played, whoever you are.
http://www.sen.com.au/display-insid...-of-probe-has-made-Dons-look-like-dopes/60557
AFL’s handling of probe has made Dons look like dopes
4.55PM 19-7-2013
OPINION:
Let’s get one thing straight about Essendon. It did not volunteer for the world of pain being endured by its coaches, players, officials and fans.
The AFL forced Essendon to “come forward” and “request” an investigation by the AFL and ASADA.
Essendon did not put itself in.
I believe the AFL forced the issue after being briefed that the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) had serious evidence of wrongdoing at Essendon, which was about to be front and centre in the biggest scandal in Australian sport.
Confronted by this bombshell, the Essendon leaders had no option but to comply.
They were somewhere between hopeful and confident that their radical supplement program was clean, but were unable to resist the AFL’s view that the only way forward was to pre-empt the ACC and seize the initiative.
So the shocked Bombers sat, faces filled with dread, at a hastily convened press conference – with little time to craft statements – and announced they were coming forward.
Of course they could not admit they had been tipped off about the impending ACC announcement (made less than 48 hours later in Canberra with tremendous fanfare).
They had to pretend they had just discovered something about their supplement program and were sufficiently disturbed that they needed the AFL and ASADA to turn them inside out. (As you would!)
They have never said what that discovery was, or even alluded to it since. No mention of it being presented to ASADA.
That’s because the information that chairman David Evans began that press conference by saying he had received “in the past 48 hours” was not in fact some internal discovery about the supplement program but warning of the ACC report about to explode in the national and international media.
The AFL, of course, could not admit it had leant on Essendon. That might have got awkward for the league as it betrayed an ACC embargo, and it didn’t suit the AFL’s agenda anyway.
No, this way the AFL was able to orchestrate a joint investigation that gave it a semblance of influence and control over the outcome.
I have argued previously on this page that this was good “governance” by the AFL, getting on the front foot as always. (See the NRL handling of the scandal for the polar contrast.)
Does it matter that the AFL and Essendon have coyly maintained the fiction that the Bombers came forward and asked to be investigated?
Perhaps not, except that it has confused people in trying to understand the club’s position.
For example, the club had to say that it was unsure about its supplement program but simultaneously that it was confident it would be cleared.
This mixed message allowed critics to condemn its “governance” since clearly it should know what its players took.
And it may also have consequences for how the AFL treats Essendon if its players are substantially cleared by ASADA, as seems increasingly likely, and escape official sanction.
Let’s imagine this does occur. What will happen next?
The AFL is thought to be lining up the club with a heavy hip-and-shoulder punishment for putting football through this ordeal – ranging from fines to suspensions to the loss of premiership points.
If the Bombers had indeed “come forward”, and the investigation revealed they had cheated or broken rules, that is a straight-forward outcome.
But what about in this scenario, when the AFL forced the club into an investigation that unearthed questionable practices but cleared it of illegality while in the process causing untold financial loss, stress and suffering and damage to reputations?
The AFL not only put Essendon into this situation but also, citing a convenient “respect for the investigation”, insisted on the Bombers not publicly defending themselves as footy reporters became investigative journalists (with wildly varying degrees of success) and commentators played merry hell with every piece of information squeezed out of the various parties.
If I were David Evans, I would be telling Andrew Demetriou that the AFL’s strategy made things a whole lot worse for Essendon.
How differently would things have played out had the AFL simply let the ACC wave break over the competition, waited for ASADA to instigate its own behind-closed-doors investigation, and allowed the Bombers to assert their innocence from the beginning?
The AFL has an investment now in finding
enough heinous behaviour to justify its action and meet the public expectation of heavy punishments.
It cannot concede that it put Essendon through all this without justification.
So the AFL will find grounds on which to punish Essendon.
And the Bombers have handed the league ready ammunition in the form of their internal Switkowski report.
Switkowski will make it relatively simple for the AFL to characterise various behaviours at Essendon as being ethically beyond the pale.
It can condemn the club’s “governance”– notwithstanding that most AFL clubs are governed in identical fashion, with one or more nominal heads of football departments but “alpha male” senior coaches in actual charge.
(And notwithstanding that part of the perceived governance problem was due only to the initial deception, as explained earlier.)
This punishment should be easy to sell to the non-Bomber public too, given the media cheer squad that lined up to condemn the club’s governance.
CEO Ian Robson’s exit, citing his lack of supervision, also helps the case.
Heightening the AFL’s dudgeon, no doubt, will be the Switkowski depiction of “a pharmaceutically experimental environment”.
And the AFL has already slammed the distasteful if not illegal practice of injecting players.
All of this will be actionable under the “bringing the game into disrepute” catch-all rule.
However, if I were Evans, I would argue that what brought the game into disrepute was not the injections
per se, or the coach’s enthusiasm for supplements, or blurred lines of supervision in the football department, but a media incited to find smoking guns, a leaking inquiry and the resultant revelations and censorious commentary
in the context of a club being dropped into a sensational drugs inquiry.
I would argue that the club has suffered enormous damage already because of the way the AFL wanted to play this.
When you put the AFL’s own role in this PR disaster into context, handing Essendon more crippling penalties for bringing the game into disrepute will require a healthy sense of irony.
– MICK ELLIS