GILLON MCLACHLAN: 18 FEBRUARY 2015

1. Hopefully, some of you still have enough self-respect to want to look in the mirror in the morning. Surely, some of you still have some respect for journalism.
   
   
2. It would be incomprehensible to me if every one of you allowed Gillon McLachlan’s unconscionable comment “The football public now accepted the possibility Essendon would be forced to field a team that included top-up players in premiership matches” to go through to the keeper.
   
   
3. Apart from not being able to substantiate his claim, McLachlan is obviously trying to send a message to the tribunal members that the public will accept a ‘guilty’ verdict despite the absence of enough evidence to ‘convict’ one player, let alone 34.
   
   
4. I thought Andrew Demetriou was one in a million and that it was impossible for any sporting organisation to throw up consecutive chief executives who apparently had no respect for procedural fairness. Sadly, I was wrong. In retrospect, I should have known that if the commissioners and Andrew Dillon didn’t care that Demetriou ran amok in 2013 during the investigation, they wouldn’t care whether McLachlan did the same during the tribunal hearing.
   
   
5. Demetriou at all times was an officer of the AFL and its leading mouthpiece, and consequently, it was improper for him to acquaint himself with the witness statements, and then, through the media, before the investigation was completed, imply Hird was guilty. To refresh your memory, the commissioners, including a judge, condoned Demetriou making the following comments: