IT is the biggest charade in Australian sporting history but the damage it has caused will have long-term ramifications across the world for Australian athletes.
At least two of the sports bosses who lined up alongside the Crime Commission and Government ministers at the mother of all media conferences on Thursday did so under great duress.
They said privately the whole thing was a “Kate Lundy special” alarmist, misleading and, most of all, based on flimsy evidence.
Hiding behind a legal act that cannot name names, places or dates, the Australian Crime Commission stood before Australia with a litany of accusations levelled against Australia’s professional sporting clubs.
The fall-out spread rapidly throughout the world and tainted each and every one of those athletes who has worn the green and gold.
Without a zot of hard evidence, the Crime Commission accused the athletes, or more particularly professional footballers, of a range of crimes ranging from doping through to match fixing and organised crime involvement, and linked them all tenuously together.
Uniform checks made by various media outlets with the NSW police have revealed that there is no investigation at their level, no charges are pending and there is no fat file of names penned in for arrest.
…
The ALP government is obviously under enormous pressure to retain office. Opinion polls suggest Tony Abbott will be moving into the Lodge come September. It is no coincidence Thursday’s media conference was timed to take some of the heat off a Labor government now under the pump at a major corruption hearing in NSW.Scaremongering is one thing but when it implicates innocents it is just plain wrong. If the Crime Commission or the ministers present really have hard evidence, present it and prosecute it. If they have not, shut up. Even the NSW police said yesterday they were not permitted to view the document which allegedly contains names of the accused.
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Surely this lot would not trash the reputation of Australian sport just to create an excuse for a diversionary press conference and serious faced announcement?
“The sports administrators who clicked their heels for Thursday’s clanger were props for Lundy and her cohorts, held to ransom because they are all funded by the public purse.”
Big sport is big business, with its administrators and players earning huge salaries. Why, then, do they receive funding from the public purse?
If you missed it, Alberici’s interview with Chris Eaton on Lateline last night is worth watching. This bloke knows what he’s talking about. Couple of LOLs when Emma struggles to understand how gambling and match fixing work.
It’s all about administrators, Eaton says – which makes last night’s Botha/Williams debacle highly suspicious.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3686776.htm
We just have to make sure that this little trick blows up in their faces.
The much maligned shock jocks will be all over this like a rash.
Only another 220 media stunt distractions to go!
Even more hilarious, remember that we were told we couldn’t know the MRRT figures because it would breach “privacy.”
These people are disgusting, borderline criminals.
They shouldn’t. And they should have told Lundy to fuck off.
Borderline?
Everything the government does these days seems to have a hidden agenda, you can’t take them at face value.
As I wrote here during the Olympics, I heard an interview at the time with a bloke who’d been at the AIS for NINE years.
He was a walker.
The AIS fucks up sports. They go their, get on the public tit and then they change the rules for national selection – which basically justifies those in each sport who get a plum job.
Its just fucking insidious. It’s not a Soviet style centre for excellence. It’s a bludge.
The AIS makes Australian hockey better? No. State Championships, the ultra competitive leagues in Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle and Illawarra and the AHL do.
there…FFS
You would think that a government with such a penchant for banning things would get rid of this ridiculous excuse for a sport.
I’ve always regarded Wilson (ex-News Limited boss John Hartigan’s missus and daughter of journo legend Bruce Wilson) as a lightweight, but this is by far the best of the analyses I’ve read this week. Well spotted, Sinc.
Might be the best thing Rebecca Wilson has ever written.
From the article :
They sang for their supper.
Also :
LOL. the future is bright. I mean what could go wrong?
Wait a minute, didn’t she declare that when a well known northern beaches footballing identity was ultimately acquitted of sexual assault (namely because the complainant was a fucking fruit loop) when he was before the trial, supported by his community, it was disgusting and cult like?
Without a zot of evidence, as well?
I had the same feeling listening to the uckfay from the ACC standing there with the two mandrils from what we laughingly call a ‘government’ as when I heard that poor excuse for an angaray saying on Australia Day 2012 “Where’s Toe-knee, we have to make sure he’s safe” — I thought hello what are the uckferays up to now — the bullshit detectors were going absolutely offff — pretty good I’d say.
What’s Sarah Palin’s photo doing in the Rebecca Wilson piece.
Calling the EPL “English Major League” was pretty cringeworthy. Apart from that I don’t think she was really failing to understand how they fix matches rather than simply not believing the extent of it that the guy was claiming.
^^^^ addressed to CL
At least the Cat didn’t subject me to read an NRL piece by that reprobate Phil Rothfield.
Yeah, I watched it again. She did alright.
I had no idea of the extent and sophistication of it myself.
Interesting what he said about the betting market in Asia being driven by real time desire to watch the games.
My BS meter starting ticking as I first heard the story. Gullible people and compliant media will keep this up.
Yes or 4 months 25 days.
My Swan maths again. Should have been 7 months 5 days
That can only imply that the obvious trend of the match is usurped in the last quarter.
It is worth noting that both Victoria and S.A. are looking at setting up “anti-corruption” bodies on the model of the Crime Commission. Secret investigations, splashy publicity without details – what could possibly go wrong?
I suspect that the embarrassment of the (public) ICAC hearings has them all running for cover. God forbid it should ever happen to their party or its cronies.
As for this latest distraction from the Government’s woeful performance, where are the bodies? Saying “bad stuff is happening” without specifics is meaningless. It would be like if ICAC came out with a statement that said “we believe there are serious problems with mining leases in NSW” and left it at that.
It’s just NSW trying to delegitimise QLDs 7 consecutive State of Origin series victories.
They really are sad.
The real reason no names have been named can be summed up with two words: defamation action.
Laying delayed action mines for a coalition government is now the order of the day.
A zot ???
So there is a possibilty that the Administrators of a Football Code may affect sporting outcomes. If there is a shred of truth in it, then we now may be able to find out how Collingwood get nearly all their Friday night games at the MCG and how they have avoided getting a “away” strip.
Nothing that this woman writes or says can be taken at face value.
During the Melbourne Storm salary cap saga, Wilson continued her regular spot on SEN’s drive program, and not once did she declare her massive conflict of interest ie, bumping uglies with the boss of News Limited. This, while constantly taking pot shots at the Storm hierarchy and refusing to acknowledge how widespread the rorting is within the Sydney clubs. The greatest conflict was the fact that News were at the time trying to rid themselves if their holding in the Storm, therefore it was probably in their interest to have them fold or be relocated.
As soon as I heard about this (via Bolt a couple of days ago) it seemed to immediately reek.
Put up or shut up, indeed.
Great duress? Does Ms Lundy have photos of them in compromising positions or something?
Photos of them consuming drugs and fixing matches, no doubt.
Seriously, what fucking joke.
Great duress? Does Ms Lundy have photos of them in compromising positions or something?
Don’t be a bloody imbecile. Lundy obviously threatened their governmental funding, grants for stadia redevelopment etc etc.
Oh well, makes a change from throwing up the “Gay Marriage” pink herring of choice.
Cold-Hands
9 Feb 13 at 4:12 pm
I doubt she needed to do anything that blatant CH. Maybe a casual questioning of their desire to clean up da sportz.
Tintarella di Luna
9 Feb 13 at 1:32 pm
I thought that when I saw the photo too. Both hotties.
I actually have a little info on this subject from a source quite close to the action…
A cousin of mine played for a couple of HIGH-ly successful footy clubs for a decade or so.
Now most of the balme is on the individuals themselves, but the clubs allowed serious pieces of shite to have access to their players rather than “associate with x and we drop you”…
My uncle has been having discussions with Jeff Kennet about a number of allegations my cousin has put forward/alleged. This news id something over 6 months old in the AFL at least.
Apparently, in the words of Kennet “as long as the government gets 10% of every bet, they dont give a shit”.
Which makes this sudden “revelation” on the nose just a bit more.
Driving around this afternoon and heard Karen Tighe’s Grandstand interview with the head of ASADA… well half of it.
When asked how many tests for peptides had been done, she avoided the question not once but twice and then fell back on the lame “confidential” line.
Given these tests are – in her words – “not robust” – and the only labs in the world that do them are in Montreal and Cologne, I’m betting that ALL of this is based on “information” and wild-ass guesses as to the substances being used. They probably haven’t even sent anything off to be tested…
Not one shred of any actual, you know, “proof” and yet these clowns are allowed to besmirch most of Australian professional sport and all of the AFL and NRL.
Which is not to say that said guesses and “information” might not be correct (and it seems there have been some very dodgy practices at some clubs), but it sure seems that they have gone off half-cocked to me.
Well, if this is some sort of diversionary tactic, the government might have shot itself in the foot. Won’t people be thinking this (whatever it turns out to be) all happened on their watch?
I understand the Crime Commission doesn’t have the authority to lay charges. If that’s the case, the state police forces will have to make whatever they can of documents they are not allowed to see.
Former Collingwood great Tony Shaw said on 3AW yesterday he’d be surprised if one AFL player was suspended for one game after all this. I have to say that unless I hear something solid I agree with him.
So any news on all the matches that were “fixed”?
No, I didn’t think so.
Donkeys.
It was laughable to hear ceo of the shiny-bum Anti-Doping Authority on AM yesterday morning dismiss any idea that half the professional athletes in Australia being doped to the eyeballs meant any failings on ASADA’s part. According to Ms Andruska, her outfit was in fact leading the charge by being a bunch of all-star sleuths. So good in fact that Australia is a magnet for anti-doping bureaucracies around the world; and that ASADA had been busy running courses in Europe. I bet they have.
Andruska peddled the most outrageous spin I’ve heard in a long time and AM just lapped it up. Excruciating.
With this much A.L.P.attention-diverting going on, it is probably timely to have an article listing all the separate Federal and State Police and I.C.A.C.-type inquiries currently being conducted into various seedy A.L.P. and union figures around the country.
For instance, I would imagine that police in 3 separate States are enquiring into the activities of the former “Gillard/Wilson” gang (aka “Bonnie and Clod”), as well as the 8 separate speeding infringements incurred in the Prime Minister’s taxpayer-provided private car (which she has refused to own up to).
There is the former A.L.P. Federal President arrested on 48 corruption charges related to the embezzlement of over $20 million from the H.S.U.
There is the immediate past National President of the A.L.P. who resigned from his own party because of what he described as its’ “racist attitude”.
There are police in at least 2 States inquiring into Craig Thomson, who has been charged with 150 offences.
There is the enquiry into Peter Slipper.
There is a former A.L.P. State Police Minister who has been charged with child pornography offences.
How many former Federal or State A.L.P. Parliamentarians are now, or have been within the last 10 years, serving a prison sentence? How many have been charged, but are awaiting sentence?
Of all the I.C.A.C.-type investigations concerning party politicians, how many have concerned Liberals, and how many Labor/Greens?
These are not insignificant matters.
It would be handy to have some solid answers to these questions in the run-up to the Federal election, so voters are not conned and lied to like they were at the last Federal election.
The Guardian, The Telegraph, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Times of India.
Google whichever international press you read. They have smeared our sportsmen across the globe. And I read that the vials of urine were in fact probably a five year old jam jar of urine.
Attacking Rebecca Wilson doesn’t make sense, indeed the rebuttals here of what she has to say are nothing more than ad hominens. Just think about it.
This act of bastardry has no precedence in the political acts of my life, and I am not young.
It would be awesome for a full spectrum, multimedia, two month long campaign of negative ads based on these, in addition to positive campaigning from non Greens and ALP and non Greens and ALP aligned parties.
It ALWAYS makes sense.
“Why, then, do they receive funding from the public purse?
They shouldn’t. And they should have told Lundy to fuck off.”
They receive funding from the government so they can own them. Exhibit A was the co-opting of this investigation which now looks like not leading anywhere in particular.
“Great duress? Does Ms Lundy have photos of them in compromising positions or something?”
You mean like this?
What’s with Lundy’s pouty lips? Makeover?
“It’s just NSW trying to delegitimise QLDs 7 consecutive State of Origin series victories.”
Cane toad paranoia. Every stick looks like a golf club!
Symbol person, that you are seemingly proud that Rebecca should always be rebutted by poisoning the well says more about your inadequacies than hers.
Speaking of such, we golfers look to be overlooked in this inquisition.
Above the fray.
Jump it would appear that women too are squeaky clean. But then that maybe because Kate’s allocation of funds to Netball in 2010 to combat drugs in sport was for once money well spent, having concluded in 2009 that monies allocated to drugs in sport should be stopped.
Or well spent on votes?
I’ve never said it was disgusting to support someone accused of rape who was eventually let off because the charges were concocted bullshit. She has. She also knows fuck all about every fucking sport she commentates about.
The fact that you bring up projection probably shows you’re a good example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Probably. Nevertheless I agree with the thrust of her latest article:
A bunch of no-hopers making vague accusations eagerly supported by government ministers. What’s not to be suspicious about?
The liebor/groin/ totally dependent pardee is agin sports getting all this money in sponsorship .that money could be usefully put to ensuring the Very Comfotable retirement of pardee stalwarts,onion “affishals ” and groin comrade collaborators,Stuff Sport Waddabout Us!
When you take government money the government owns you — it’s the old piper and the tune thingy isn’t it.
That why this attempt must not succeed. Effing bastards, we pay the big mongrels between $1 and $2 an effing vote when they get over a certain number. That should be outlawed too.
Can anyone tell me one good reason why the taxpayers pay for anything to do with political parties. They shouldn’t get a zac of our dime. Not a zac
Love your work Boris.
Sorry can’t find the link on a recent story I think in the Australian about the proposal to fund with taxpayer dollars the administrative costs of political parties.
How long till the footy season proper starts? This issue will be dead in the water before then. Don’t know anyone but a few self righteous journos and pollies that cares.
Next Friday for NAB cup. March 22 for the season proper.
The smart money’s on West Coast.
And so we should be Jump. As a very serious golfer I have yet to figure out how any drug could help me. I have tried beer wine spirits etc but as yet nothing… sadly.
Tonight, Darkies v Whities.
Australians unite!!
Tonight,
Darkiesthose who identify as aboriginal vWhitiesthe rest.Jupes
Yeah, ok.
Benny just scored.
He’s a Nth Mackay Devil.
I live about driver+4 iron from that clubhouse.
I’m in
Darkies those who identify as aboriginal territory, and love it.Benny gets his 2nd.
Yeah, 3 for Benny.
I’ll also add Travis Waddell and Dane Neilson to the Devils junior list.
Tonight, Darkiesthose who identify as aboriginal v Whities the rest.
Is that what all the yelling up and down the street is about?
“I have tried beer wine spirits etc but as yet nothing… sadly.”
Beer works. Five schooners and I turn into Tiger Woods. Well, the wrapping cars around trees kind, at least.
“Tonight, Darkies v Whities.
Australians unite!!”
Misogynist! Misogynist!!
In common with many team sports, the AFL has weak anti-doping policy.
I suggest the reason is the economics of team production. Punishing a player dumb enough to be caught will reduce the productivity of the rest of the team.
ANTI-DOPING authorities is storing blood samples from NRL and AFL players until a definitive test is developed to detect peptides. Peptides prompt the production of more of naturally occurring growth hormones and insulin which strengthens muscles, speeds recovery and can increase lean muscle mass
samples held for testing with more advance anti-masking technologies and forfeiture of ill-gotten prizes do not work as well when the prizes are shared.
How so?
They are (and I agree they were terribly tardy on it) signed up to full WADA code testing, and have been for years. They spend more than any other Australian code paying for ASADA to conduct these tests.
They have an out of competition testing program for illicit drugs… one of very few sports world-wide to test out of competition for these.
In what way can this be considered “weak”?
My issue with the AFL and their drug policy is the three strikes business, weak penalties and a combination of their holier than thou attitude wrapped in denial. Last a week or so ago the clubs had their drugs summit and everyone declared there was no issue, everything was fine and the policy didn’t need changing. They are such smug pricks at times.
Well that looks like blowing up in their faces. It’s not often that I agree with “Bloody Jeff” on football matters, but he was on the money in his radio interview after the summit: the policy should be working like the Olympic sports and rub people out for drugs on the banned list for two years in the first instance and for life on the second.
There are plenty of workplaces in Australia that have a low or zero tolerance for drugs and enforcement to match (my own place of work as an example), so I don’t think it’s out of order for the same to be in place at elite level sport.
With all of this said, I share the skepticism of my fellow Cat’s about the timing of this and the strong stench of a beat up. Wayne Bennett is right: put up or shut up. If there is a systemic problem across the sporting codes, present the evidence and prosecute accordingly. Don’t impugn the reputations of the majority of Australian athletes who have nothing to do with any of this.
The three strike thing ONLY applies to out-of-season testing for illicit drugs. Most comps worldwide don’t even have such testing.
I agree that there are still some issues to be addressed in that side of things (information for the clubs, perhaps one less “strike”), but it seems to me the AFL get kicked for actually trying to do the right, and other codes cop a free pass because they are doing nothing. And that comes from someone who is no fan of the AFL administration.
But none of that is at all relevant to the PED issue now being discussed.
There is global concern and revelations about match fixing. Recent Interpol major conference re, “TheUgly Side of the Beautiful Game” Singapore the source of the major bet?
ACC Interpol, Europeans etc been seriously concerned for 12 months or so. Presumably the ACC have been working with all of these international orgs. This week wasn’t the climax internationally, neither was there any crisis that required an announcement here, with great fanfare.
So it is just a coincidence that Jason and Kate found they had to tell Australia, this week, about the horror of and massive spread of corruption in our sport.
The week that Australia was hearing all about the horror of and massive spread of corruption in our body politic
What about the AWURA scandal?
What about the culture of child sexual abuse in the ALP?
What about the money that Gillard and Co took from the wives and orphans fund?
What a load of crap. Not one arrest will be made.
There have been hundreds charged and convicted for match fixing, not just in football but cricket snooker sumo wrestling etc. One argument is that until Asia starts charging it will be impossible to beat, in particular go to Singapore said one commentator. The place of origin of our suggested huge bet. And I assume brought to our attention by the established early warning bodies operating with the assistance of legitimate betting organisations.
In their rush to distract us from our home grown political corruption they the ALP have stuffed it again. It is a struggle to work out what they are actually on about. Are they conflating individual abuse of drugs with organised crimes match fixing. I am not reading that kind of conflation on the international crime fight.
And having served up a confused exaggerated incomplete and unproved horror story they have abused all of our sportsmen nationally and internationally. Heard Jason piously suggesting that it was the individual club’s fault, the blanket corruption perception, by not fessing up to their particular misdemeanours, nothing to do with him.