'The drugs in football affair illustrates what happens when the interests of one particular team are put ahead of care for its players and for the competition of which it forms part. Eventually the group allegiance crumbles as individuals look out for themselves.' Andrew Hamilton's succinct summation is one of the best observations to have emerged from the thickening miasma of evidence, speculation, rumour and point-counter-point surrounding the Essendon Football Club since it 'self-reported' its supplements program at the start of the 2013 season.
Group allegiance has indeed crumbled, some individuals are certainly looking out for themselves, and the players — caught in the middle, grievously uncared for in the past under what the Switkowski report called a regime of pharmacological experimentation, worn down week after week by pressures, accusations and stresses they are ill-equipped to cope with — are now playing without heart or firm intent. As Steve Waugh has memorably remarked, you don't lose innate ability from one week or one month to the next, but, under certain kinds of conditions, you can lose form. For the Essendon footballers, the conditions have now bottomed out.
I am an avid, reasonably well informed fan of the game but no more than an interested and slightly bemused onlooker when it comes to understanding the complexities of a catastrophe like this drug scandal. I don't pretend to have the insights of the many experienced and accomplished sports journalists who have written thousands of words on this sorry business. For a disengaged onlooker like me, there are merely small but possibly potent straws in the controversial winds. One of these is a statement Essendon coach James Hird has made several times, namely that Essendon has a 'right' to play finals.
Now, of course, we know what he means on the face of it: simply, that Essendon have at the moment won enough games to qualify to play finals in September. It's a curious way to phrase it though, and Hird's emphatic claim of a 'right' runs deeper than mere statistics.
When you wed that word 'right' to Hird's often proclaimed passion for the club and his aspiration when chosen as coach to put Essendon back where it 'belonged', 'right' starts to assume the force of due privilege, a status not available to other clubs. Those who have convinced themselves they are in the nature of things privileged rarely tolerate much opposition. But a football competition thrives on opposition so, if you are privileged in that competition as of right, you expect to win, and do almost anything to ensure you win. That is your right.
It's not new, the conviction that this or that team is a natural leader, an almost invariable winner and, therefore, in a vague unstated way, beyond the laws governing the rest.
Jack Elliott, as president of the Carlton Football Club, poured scorn on what he called the 'miserable' history of a club like Footscray, and accused Essendon of cheating to win the 2000 Premiership on the eve of which (1999) Essendon was fined $276,274 for salary cap rorting and lost first and second round draft picks. In November 2002, on Elliott's own watch at Carlton, salary cap rorting cost the club $930,000 and crucial draft picks (including stars-in-waiting Brendan Goddard and Daniel Wells), blows from which the club in the view of some is still recovering.
In an eerie symmetry, AFL Commission chairman Ron Evans, father of recently fallen Essendon president David Evans, described Carlton's behaviour 'as a deliberate, elaborate and sophisticated scheme to break the player payment rules. Carlton members and supporters ought to feel betrayed by the actions of their club.' The scandal ended Elliott's tumultuous presidency during which at one point, asked if he had any regrets, he said his only regret was that Carlton didn't win the premiership every year — a flippant version of the born-to-rule syndrome.
Suddenly, a few weeks ago, like a marginal note to the central chaotic supplements plot, came the case of St Kilda small forward Ahmed Saad. Saad, an exemplary character, a practicing Muslim and an AFL nominated multicultural ambassador, tested positive to a drug banned only in competition after he incautiously accepted a hydrating drink from a friend.
What was interesting about this case was the precision, speed and certainty with which everyone — media, AFL, and pundits of one kind or another — were able to pronounce upon and predict Saad's probable two year ban. In what was so clearly an innocent mistake by a fine young athlete there was no talk about 'rights' or waiting until 'the truth' comes out or the deployment of heavy hitting legal minds or the threat of endless court action. Certainly Saad is a much smaller fish in the poisoned AFL pool, but should that matter?
Well, it does of course. St Kilda and, to take another example, Footscray (the Western Bulldogs) do not have 'a right'. St Kilda is one of the oldest clubs in the AFL but thin on success; the Dogs are the face of the underprivileged (Melbourne) west but equally light on the trophy front. Neither club is fashionable and their best days, while duly noted, are quickly forgotten.
No one connected with either club would claim it was 'the greatest club in Australia' as James Hird said of Essendon on Tuesday morning (13 August), while awaiting yet another AFL 'announcement' that failed to materialise at a proposed time. He meant it — another indication of how far rampant ambition and a conviction of entitlement, of having a 'right', has taken him from harsh reality.
If however — as Essendon FC remains intransigent and in denial — Hird needs a glimpse of harsh, unprivileged reality, Ahmed Saad could probably accommodate him.
Brian Matthews is honorary professor of English at Flinders University and an award winning columnist and biographer.