SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: The AFL is the country's biggest professional sport and it's undergone massive expansion under chief executive Andrew Demetriou. But with Mr Demetriou's resignation earlier this month, the focus has turned to his legacy. The wife of suspended Essendon coach James Hird has questioned the AFL's culture and governance during Demetriou's tenure. Speaking exclusively to 7.30, Tania Hird says that her husband was scapegoated by the AFL when he accepted a one-year suspension following the Essendon supplement saga. Ms Hird says he took the suspension not because he was guilty of knowledge of players being injected with illegal supplements, but because it was made clear that his future in the football system would be in doubt if he didn't.
But Tania Hird is not the only vocal critic. The lawyer who represented Dean Bailey, the former Melbourne coach who died last week, has also spoken out about his client's treatment during the so-called Melbourne tanking affair.
Louise Milligan reports.
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Tania Hird is the wife of Essendon coach James Hird, who was suspended for 12 months because he was coach during the club's controversial sports supplements regime. James Hird is gagged from speaking about it by Essendon and the AFL, but Tania has decided to tell their side of the story.
TANIA HIRD: It is a really great game, but at the moment it is an industry where there are a lot of people who are frightened about speaking the truth, about speaking their mind.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: James Hird flew to France to start a three-month MBA course last Friday. Tania Hird and their four children will follow him at the end of the month. She's still smarting over events that saw her high-flying husband forced out of the game he loves for a year.
Why did he fall on his sword?
TANIA HIRD: He didn't plead to any breach of the player rules, he wasn't found guilty of any breach of the player rules. In the end, it was the threats and the bullying of the AFL to the club and to himself.
JASON CLARE, JUSTICE MINISTER (Feb. 7, 2013): The findings are shocking and they'll disgust Australian sports fans.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: It was just over a year ago when the Essendon supplements scandal broke. After a 12-month Australian Crime Commission investigation, anti-doping body ASADA was launching an investigation into supplements taken by Essendon players.
Essendon had relied on supplements supplied by sports scientist Stephen Dank and just what was in them became the football scandal of the year. ASADA's announcement was not news in the Hird household.
TANIA HIRD: We were told prior to the announcement that there was going to be an investigation into the Essendon Football Club involving performance-enhancing ElephantJuice or supplements. We were told that at a time when we shouldn't have been told that.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: The story that Essendon had been tipped off about the supplements investigation first broke last July. The claim was that Essendon's chairman, David Evans, spoke to AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou in the days before the ASADA announcement, and straight after that conversation, Evans told James Hird and other club officials he'd learned that a club was under investigation. Andrew Demetriou has always strenuously denied tipping Essendon off.
Tania Hird, an assiduous record-keeper, witnessed the events that followed.
TANIA HIRD: Certainly I heard David Evans say to James on speakerphone - I was taking notes; I take a lot of notes. On 25th July, David admitted that he said to James, "Go into ASADA and tell the whole truth, but don't say what Andrew Demetriou told us."
LOUISE MILLIGAN: The tip-off?
TANIA HIRD: It has been referred to as the tip-off. So, um, James did say in return, "If I'm not asked about it, I won't offer it up. But if I'm asked about it, like anything I'm asked about, I will answer it honestly and truthfully and to the best of my knowledge."
LOUISE MILLIGAN: In August, James Hird hawse summoned by the AFL Commission to answer charges of bringing the game into disrepute for allowing a supplements regime at Essendon implemented by Stephen Dank.
Stephen Amendola was James Hird's lawyer right through the AFL hearing last August.
STEPHEN AMENDOLA, JAMES HIRD'S LAWYER: We all turned up, all got put into different rooms and it was a horse-trading negotiation. ... If someone had actually said at any stage, "Oh, no, alright, no deal. Call your first witness," they would not have been able to do that. "Run your case." They would not have been able to do that.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Stephen Amendola does not mince his words when describing the AFL's most senior officials during that process.
STEPHEN AMENDOLA: Well they looked to behave like a bunch of cashed-up bogans who thought they could do what they wanted.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: And why do you think that?
STEPHEN AMENDOLA: Just the complete failure of process. And it fundamentally arises from the commission's structure. So you've got a structure where the commission is the investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury. And the idea that they don't think that there's something wrong with that is frankly astounding.
TANIA HIRD: I definitely think James was a scapegoat. In fact we were told that James being the scapegoat was non-negotiable.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Who told you that?
TANIA HIRD: I'm not at liberty to say.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Andrew Demetriou declined to be interviewed by 7.30, but was at a press conference this week with Victorian Premier Denis Napthine, promoting diversity and tolerance in football.
Do you have any regrets about anything that happened with James Hird last year?
ANDREW DEMETRIOU, AFL CHIEF EXECUTIVE: From an AFL perspective, we've got no regrets about the process we ran, and as I've said many times before, if you're asking me whether it's important to protect the welfare of young people, particularly when you're talking about their health and safety, we have no regrets, and as I've said before, I've never injected anyone, no-one at the AFL's ever injected anyone. And I just need to remind you of that.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: After 11 years as chief executive of the Australian Football League, the richest game in the country, Andrew Demetriou is resigning. He'll leave at the end of the season.
ANDREW DEMETRIOU: I've always said that it's a privilege and an honour to serve the game, but I also believe that the time is right.
MIKE FITZPATRICK, AFL CHAIRMAN (March 3): I think you'll all agree that Andrew's been a significant force in our competition. And as chief executive officer, he's led our industry through a period of extraordinary growth.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: But there has been debate over the legacy he's leaving and the culture he has overseen during his tenure.
JEFF KENNETT, FMR VIC. PREMIER & FMR HAWTHORN PRESIDENT: Even with the announcement of Andrew's retirement - and I wish him well because he's done some wonderful things - to announce that for the end of the season is Dame Nellie Melba-like. He's going to be going to lunches where people are going to be standing up and it's all about Andrew, it's not about the code.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Former Victorian Premier, later Hawthorn president, Jeff Kennett, has been an outspoken critic of the AFL under Mr Demetriou's leadership.
JEFF KENNETT: It's become a closed circle of individuals protecting themselves against scrutiny and against transparency.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Football writers who have failed to toe the AFL's line have faced the wrath of Andrew Demetriou. The Australian's Chip Le Grand attracted Demetriou's ire last December when he broke a story that the AFL was about to settle its case against Essendon doctor Bruce Reid. Andrew Demetriou denied it was true and ridiculed the reporter on breakfast radio.
ANDREW DEMETRIOU (774 ABC Melb., Sept. 13, 2013): Given Homer's inside information - Homer Le Grand at The Australian, he must know something. He's been so intrepid reporter on this whole matter and got so much of it wrong, he's probably being consistently wrong again.
GERARD WHATELEY, RADIO COMPERE: I hesitate to ask, but why is Chip Homer?
ANDREW DEMETRIOU: That's his name, I think.
RED SYMONS, RADIO COMPERE: That's his real name. Chip is his nickname.
ANDREW DEMETRIOU: I think so. I think so. But he's been so deplorable thus far, got so much wrong, he might fluke it.
CHIP LE GRAND, THE AUSTRALIAN: Looking back on it now, I think there were two things that were in play. One, that Andrew Demetriou as chief executive of the AFL wasn't well-informed, and two, by that stage, I think the hubris or the arrogance perhaps of being in that job for too long had got the better of him.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: The run-ins with journalists were going on behind closed doors too.
CHIP LE GRAND: The AFL was very unhappy with how the Herald Sun was covering the Essendon story. They denied accreditation, Finals accreditation to Michael Warner, who was probably the most critical of the Herald Sun reporters in his coverage of the AFL.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Critics of the AFL hierarchy also mention its handling of the coach involved in the Melbourne tanking affair of 2009. The Melbourne Demons club, coached by Dean Bailey, was accused of deliberately losing games so as to get favourable player draft picks for the following year. Bailey was suspended for the first 16 weeks of last year.
CHRIS POLLARD, LAWYER: Out of the Melbourne tanking scenario, no-one was ever charged, let alone found guilty. However, the Melbourne Football Club received a fine of half a million dollars. My client, Dean, was suspended, and really, it's just like me being charged with murder, going to court, being found not guilty and then serving 10 years non-parole. That's the absurdity of it.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Lawyer Chris Pollard acted for Dean Bailey. He was dismayed at what happened to his client. He says Dean Bailey was warned by someone on behalf of the AFL that there would be consequences for his career if he didn't settle the case.
CHRIS POLLARD: The threats were made that he probably didn't have a great future in the AFL football industry and Dean was concerned with that in terms of financially supporting his family. Matters have to be commercially resolved, swept under the carpet, dealt with quickly so there's no embarrassment to the AFL or perhaps the AFL going to court, and if they went to court, their rules and regulations may not stand up.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: After leaving Melbourne, Dean Bailey was employed by the supportive Adelaide Football Club, but diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer at the end of last year. He died last week.
CHRIS POLLARD: He was very concerned about - after it about his character, about being tainted, and I say this colloquially, as a cheat, and also he was concerned about his future in the AFL industry. He clearly, through my experience, was a very, very, very decent man - a family man and a good guy. People that I think football needs. He was honest and this scenario had an effect on him.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: As Chris Pollard tells it, Bailey's experience was another example of the AFL riding roughshod over its people.
7.30 has spoken to senior club officials, both current and past, from around the country, who tell similar stories. All declined to go on camera for fear of repercussions for their clubs or themselves. The word most commonly used to describe their run-ins with the AFL was "bullying".
JEFF KENNETT: As president of Hawthorn, when the AFL was trying to move us out of Tasmania onto the mainland, and I said, "No, we have a commitment to Tasmania. We have 8,000 members there. We enjoy playing there. We're not going." And then I was offered a handful of money. Not me personally, but the club.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: How much money?
JEFF KENNETT: Oh, well, I think it was $1 or $2 million a year.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: And who offered it?
JEFF KENNETT: Oh, one of the senior officials of the AFL. And I'm just saying, they tried to press their point, and when they weren't getting their way, in the end, they just turned round and said, "We'll try and buy you."
LOUISE MILLIGAN: Mr Demetriou, you've always publicly promoted tolerance and good behaviour in the game. Would you say that yourself and the senior members of the executive have always demonstrated that good behaviour behind closed doors when you're dealing with people within the AFL and also the media?
ANDREW DEMETRIOU: Oh, God, I think so, 'cause I can tell you right now, I sleep very well at night about the values that I uphold and the way that we treat people and the way that we try and protect the integrity of this code, absolutely.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: That hasn't been Tania Hird's experience.
TANIA HIRD: It wasn't about the integrity of the game by any stretch of the imagination. It was all about the AFL brand.
LOUISE MILLIGAN: With Andrew Demetriou stepping down, the future direction of the AFL will be for his successor to decide.
JEFF KENNETT: We need to change the culture within the code. Lift the professionalism, lift the standard of governance and then recognise the importance of the code over any individual.
ANDREW DEMETRIOU: We are but custodians of the game. We get to borrow the game, have a lend of it for a while and hopefully hand it over to the next person in better shape than when we found it, and I hope we've done that. Thank you.
SARAH FERGUSON: Louise Milligan reporting.
