Con Gorozidis wrote:Disagree wholeheartedly - unless you think none at the other clubs had thought of taking peds and the Bombers were the only ones or the first ones to think of it.
I think plenty of players have taken PEDs at various times. Very few have been caught but given that the AFL is not an Olympic sport, that's not massively surprising. Possibly there have even been clubs with formal programs - how much preseason drug testing would there have been in the 80s? If Hawthorn or Carlton had been injecting their players with roids in November or December no-one would even have noticed.
Con Gorozidis wrote:But 17 clubs agreed this was not a path they wanted to take the sport down and 1 club didn't.
Serious? I have trouble believing that. Essendon were the one who got caught, but Robinson and Dank worked at other places. Doubts exist about Geelong in 09, Collingwood in 10, Bock at Gold Coast - at least. Maybe Essendon just did it worse than other clubs?
Remember the thing ten years ago when Brisbane had won three flags in a row and the AFL discovered they'd been using hypoxicators the entire time? They weren't forbidden at the time and after an investigation the AFL eventually decided it was OK. But what if the AFL had banned it? Would Brisbane have been suddenly considered cheats for pushing the boundaries?
I don't know much about the specifics of the Essendon case. I have trouble bringing myself to care. But safe to say some of the injections were legal and remain legal. B12, for instance. Some of the injections were dubious and remain dubious. Very few were obviously illegal at the time. So while it could obviously still turn out that they were cheating massively, it's just not clear that's the case yet, and I don't know how anyone can have convicted them in their own mind. If the Saints were in the same position half of our supporters would be having a go at the media for victimising us.
Con Gorozidis wrote:I don't know why its always the same names being thrown up anyhow - the same boys club merry-go-round. Surely there are some outstanding candidates from outside the shallow gene pool that is "AFL circles".
I agree with that. There's obviously a bunch of deadshits who all lunch with each other and get all the jobs in this industry.