This absurdity damages lives and reputations
PETER COSTELLO
Herald Sun
March 25, 2014 12:00AM
WITH the AFL and NRL football seasons now under way, we can all get back to the main topic of the winter season: just who was taking peptides and who tipped off who in the lead-up to the release of the Australian Crime Commission report codenamed “Project Aperio”.
The report, released in February last year, did not name any club or any person but it focused on the AFL and NRL, and it is now clear that the principal source of interest was Stephen Dank, one-time sports scientist at the Cronulla Sharks in the NRL and the Essendon Bombers in the AFL.
One thing those two clubs also had in common was that I was a patron for both in the early 2000s. I will say no more about that. I decline to answer any questions on the grounds that I knew nothing, Your Honour.
The Sharks’ coach, Shane Flanagan, is under a 12-month ban, as is Essendon coach James Hird. But Hird’s wife, Tania, is none too happy about his treatment. She let rip against the AFL on the ABC 7.30 program last week. It may or it may not help her case, but she has every right to say what she thinks. We are not yet at the stage where players’ wives have to get clearance from football administrators before they can give their opinions.
It was laughable to hear the AFL chorus suggest that Hird should get his wife “under control”. What is an organisation that prides itself on “progressive views” doing when it suggests that womenfolk speak only when they have the approval of their husbands? How indeed does someone get their wife under control?
So the real business of the football season has begun: who knew what, who said what to whom, and when did they say it? That will easily take up the whole of this season, just as it took up all of last season. No player has yet received an infraction notice (if they ever will) from the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority. No criminal charges have been laid and the man at the centre of it all, Stephen Dank, said last week that he hasn’t even spoken to the authorities. How did things become so absurd?
It was February 7 last year when the chief executives of all the major sporting codes of Australia lined up behind an oh-so-serious justice minister, Jason Clare, and an equally serious sports minister, Senator Kate Lundy, to announce they had “shocking” findings that would “disgust” all Australian sports fans.
They said they had evidence that ElephantJuice in sport was linked to organised crime. Senator Lundy declared the government had one simple message: “We will catch you” and “We are well on the way to seeking out and hunting down those who dope and cheat”.
Well, not so well on the way as to put someone away in prison, or to secure a conviction in court, or to hold a trial, or even to lay a charge in the past year.
The Australian Crime Commission is there to fight organised crime. I give the police the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps some charges will be laid against the criminal bosses behind this shocking business. When they are, I hope the police call a press conference to let us know about it. That’s the general idea — to call a press conference when you have something to announce, rather than to distribute vague non-specific allegations against the world at large.
When a politician makes an announcement, it is useful to have a backdrop that illustrates the point. It is good to do an environmental announcement in a forest so the camera can get footage of all those beautiful trees. Job announcements are best done on an assembly line to show people hard at work. If it is about road construction, it is best to do it wearing a hard hat with a green vest and a shovel in hand. Television is a visual medium. The footage tells the story. That is why media advisers work so hard at choosing location and backdrops.
February 7, 2013, came to be described as “The blackest day in Australian sport”. But what actually happened on that day? Was a criminal charged, or a cheat shamed out of the industry? No, it was the day when the heads of all the major sporting codes flew to Canberra to stand on a stage behind two government ministers as they claimed that organised crime had penetrated their industry. They were there to lend credibility to the claims. They were the backdrop, the footage, the props for the day. Probably they had no idea they were going to be used like that.
It was not the blackest day in Australian sport but it was a black day for the sporting CEOs. Since then, things have continued as they started: a circus of media manipulation. If this was a sporting contest, someone would blow the final siren and declare the result.
But, unfortunately, this is more serious than that. It involves people’s lives and reputations. Once you start a game like this, people are playing for keeps.
Peter Costello is a former federal treasurer and Essendon No.1 ticket holder
Mark Robinson ‏@Robbo_heraldsun
