ASADA Saga Thread

[slide rule]

Oh yay hooper

Still a knob.

 

[slide rule]

Hooper: A gossip columnist giving legal opinion.

 

[CrankyShark]

If that happens it will be truly ****ed. They will only really be punishing the fans who have had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. I really don't think most players or officials really care too much about a football club tbh. They are really all just paid mercenaries these days anyway. Considering that as a fan, maybe it's time to give the support away.

WADA can't enforce any preferred sanction. The WADA code leaves it entirely to the discretion of the sporting code. This has since changed in the WADA code.

A suspension of the club would signal that the NRL is going to kill us. I don't see it happening.

 

[evertonshark]

Hooper: A gossip columnist giving legal opinion.

He looks lost without his mates Wilson and massoud

 

[BlackWhiteBlue]

He looks lost without his mates Wilson and massoud

Shes his lift

 

[Sir Chadley]

I dunno... I guess I'm a bit old school.

In football, if you stuff up, you put your hand up to the rest of the team and take responsibility for what has just happened.

If you're strategically convoluting or re-manufacturing the truth or deflecting blame to avoid a sanction or having to take responsibility for your actions then you're a bit of a coward and a pretty weak scumbag. If you're facilitating other people doing that then you're just even more of a pathetic slime. That doesn't apply to just players but EVERYONE involved in this situation.

"Reputation"... you earn it one way or another. When people talk of someone's reputation, consider that you earn a bad reputation just as much as you earn a good reputation.

I'm the same Fitz. If you stuff up have the courage to say you've done the wrong thing.
I was working with a bloke recently who reeked of arrogance that made so many stuff ups but wouldn't have a bar of the fact they were his fault. He spoke down to people, rubbed everyone the wrong way and it wasn't long before everyone avoided him.

Where is he now? Well, not with us. Our company terminated him for not doing his job. I think had he been humble, accepted he was wrong in most cases, he'd still be with us.

 

[Sir Chadley]

Dunno, probably wake up sunday and be keen.

Ok mate. Hopefully I get there as well.

 

[dylan the villian]

Shes his lift

just ducked off to the bottlo

 

[fitz]

I'm the same Fitz. If you stuff up have the courage to say you've done the wrong thing.
I was working with a bloke recently who reeked of arrogance that made so many stuff ups but wouldn't have a bar of the fact they were his fault. He spoke down to people, rubbed everyone the wrong way and it wasn't long before everyone avoided him.

Where is he now? Well, not with us. Our company terminated him for not doing his job. I think had he been humble, accepted he was wrong in most cases, he'd still be with us.

Yeah mate, you judge the quality of a bloke by how much you trust them on their word... or more to the point, how much they value their word.

 

[gando2230]

I don't really like hooper but he was ok on the footy show.
Didn't bag out the sharks.
Just said it how it is as much as anyone knows anyway.

 

[evertonshark]

I don't really like hooper but he was ok on the footy show.
Didn't bag out the sharks.
Just said it how it is as much as anyone knows anyway.

Kent was the same on nrl 360 I thought, wonder why they've changed their tune considering they were like rabid junkyard dogs regarding this story last year.

 

[slide rule]

ASADA tables offer to AFL for Essendon players to accept six-month bans

Roy Masters August 21, 2014 - 10:00PM
​

ASADA has tabled with AFL chief executive, Gillon McLachlan, a six-month sanction for Essendon players, on the condition they accept they took performance-enhancing substances in 2011-12.

If Essendon wait until the Federal Court's Justice John Middleton brings down his decision in the club's case that a joint AFL/ASADA investigation was unlawful, the offer will be withdrawn.

ASADA is willing to accept Essendon players were doped and duped and therefore qualify for a WADA "no significant fault" discount, taking the standard two-year ban for use of prohibited substances down to 12 months.

ASADA chief executive Ben McDevitt is also willing to apply the 75 per cent discount which applies to all athletes who concede guilt and whose evidence leads to a doping infraction being issued against another person. Essendon players co-operated with ASADA from the first days of the investigation, when the anti-doping body joined the AFL in order to take advantage of its coercive powers. However, the 75 per cent discount applies to the full sentence, meaning it is an 18-month concession on two years, not one year. That is, six months.

NRL players were effectively offered a three-month ban, with their year-long sanction backdated to November, 2013. Ironically, the AFL and its supporters in Canberra precipitated this. The ASADA Act allows for administrative delays in bringing a case to a conclusion to mitigate a sentence. The joint AFL/ASADA investigation, promoted by senior public servants in the government of Julia Gillard, shifted ASADA's already stretched resources away from Sydney to Melbourne, meaning the Cronulla investigation was effectively placed on hold.

The AFL, by bullying ASADA into producing evidence for an interim report to punish the club, coach James Hird and other Essendon staff, drew resources away from the NRL. The co-operation of WADA is mandatory for all discounted bans and McDevitt may have a difficult task convincing the Montreal-based world body to accept the proposed Essendon ban of six months

A level of co-operation with a national anti-doping body is necessary to sustain discounted sanctions. Essendon, by taking ASADA to the Federal Court, could be perceived to being unco-operative, while Cronulla's board ruled out legal action, irrespective of ASADA penalties. While Essendon players were not a party to the action taken by their club and Hird, they were represented by a leading Melbourne barrister, David Grace QC.

Furthermore, club president Paul Little, has persistently claimed Essendon players are not guilty of taking performance-enhancing substances and has aggravated ASADA by saying publicly it will not communicate with him. It is understood ASADA's initial reticence to meet Little was only prior to the issue of show cause notices to 34 past and present Essendon players, where he deemed it would be a conflict of interest.

All that is required under the ASADA Act, for the anti-doping body to issue an infraction notice, is to establish to its satisfaction that evidence of a doping breach took place. It is presumed in the case of Essendon it is the use of the banned thymosin drug.

ASADA has also requested McLachlan issue a life ban against sports scientist Stephen Dank, the architect of the supplements program at Essendon and Cronulla, although the anti-doping body accepts this is the only common link between the two football clubs.

The Essendon campaign extended over a full year, with multiple injections where, despite the magisterial authority of Hird, players could have been expected to ask after say the fifth needle what were the substances and why was the operation conducted off site and requiring signed waivers.

By contrast, the Cronulla drugs regime was brief and ad hoc, administered after the captain's run final training session, from a corporate box at the club's home ground, with supplements stored amateurishly in an esky. The Cronulla club doctor quickly banned all injections and the program quickly reverted to use of creams and lozenges.

It is anticipated a three-month ban of past and present Cronulla players, where only five (one who has already announced his retirement) remain at the club, will be more palatable to NRL clubs than if the same punishment was applied to Essendon, where more than 20 players remain. Rival AFL clubs will contend the damage done to the AFL brand is greater in Melbourne where the code takes on the status of a civic religion. Essendon, in line for a position in the 2014 semi finals, have major issues to confront in terms of the date a six-month ban begins.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-ne...month-bans-20140821-106qv2.html#ixzz3B1vQnxaY
​

 

[Beejay]

I don't really like hooper but he was ok on the footy show.
Didn't bag out the sharks.
Just said it how it is as much as anyone knows anyway.

Does Hooper write match reports at all, or is he literally just a gossip columnist who happens to focus on sportspeople?

 

[CrankyShark]

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-ne...month-bans-20140821-106qv2.html#ixzz3B1vQnxaY
​

My personal feeling is ASADA should let it go if they are offering these deals. If you can't get people for the standard two years bans and instead let them cop three week bans for growth hormone derivatives, then declare you don't have enough evidence. It makes Australian sport look ridiculous and fundamentally corrupt.

It is a sporting integrity issue. If there isn't enough evidence then that is not ASADA's fault. Letting swathes of people off with three weeks is not on. Do it properly or not at all. What must Olympians like Sally Pearson think.

 

[vicsharkfan]

Can we put up a countdown clock on the homepage till 9.30am...

 

[BlackWhiteBlue]

My personal feeling is ASADA should let it go if they are offering these deals. If you can't get people for the standard two years bans and instead let them cop three week bans for growth hormone derivatives, then declare you don't have enough evidence. It makes Australian sport look ridiculous and fundamentally corrupt.

It is a sporting integrity issue. If there isn't enough evidence then that is not ASADA's fault. Letting swathes of people off with three weeks is not on. Do it properly or not at all. What must Olympians like Sally Pearson think.

Thats kinda my thoughts. As a selfish fan you want it done. So 2015 starts without the media following and the meetings etc

But i guess for the players as people, and athletes they will then carry that on record that they got 12 month bans. In order to get it over with.

More extreme situation i know but if it were a criminal case would you want the plea bargain if you knew you were inncocent? Doubt it.

 

[Floyd]

My personal feeling is ASADA should let it go if they are offering these deals. If you can't get people for the standard two years bans and instead let them cop three week bans for growth hormone derivatives, then declare you don't have enough evidence. It makes Australian sport look ridiculous and fundamentally corrupt.

It is a sporting integrity issue. If there isn't enough evidence then that is not ASADA's fault. Letting swathes of people off with three weeks is not on. Do it properly or not at all. What must Olympians like Sally Pearson think.

ASADA need the 'out' though - they have a room full of people and (allegedly) some chemicals but no way of effectively tying the two together. So they offer the players a deal too good to be true make it all go away...and then ASADA get to say to the sporting public 'I told you so'. I hope that WADA are on board though...

 

[Floyd]

Thats kinda my thoughts. As a selfish fan you want it done. So 2015 starts without the media following and the meetings etc

But i guess for the players as people, and athletes they will then carry that on record that they got 12 month bans. In order to get it over with.

More extreme situation i know but if it were a criminal case would you want the plea bargain if you knew you were inncocent? Doubt it.

I think we all want it to go away - the players bare the brunt though. I hope that through the deal that ASADA (and the sporting public) get to the people that the investigation should be chasing in the first place...

 

[DANGA HATCH]

Wilson and co. Have spent 18 months investigating the Sharks for Danks 3 month stint. Will they be fair dinkum now and investigate Danks 5 years at Manly? If they are journalists they would do it. Oops I forgot, we live in a society that kicks the weak and is too scared to take on the strong.
Wilson and Co. Disgusting, biased journalism!!!

 

[vicsharkfan]

Dank not ever being compelled to answer questions into this cluster fujjch is as ludicrous as George Pell being able to Skype into a royal commission into child abuse amongst some in the Catholic Church because he was to busy over at vactican central.