XAVIER CAMPBELL: 27 AUGUST 2020

CEO Essendon Football Club

Dear Xavier

 As you are aware, in an attempt to prove the Essendon 34 convicted prohibited drug takers were ‘not guilty’ and that ASADA was corrupt, I made an FOI request on 22 June 2016 for ASADA’s presentation material used at the Anti-Doping Review Violation Panel (ADRVP) meeting on 3 November 2014.

 Despite ASADA lies and four-year stone-walling the envy of Bill Lawry and Geoff Boycott, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has agreed to hear my appeal between late January 2021 and March 2021.

 This is an official request for you to appear as a witness for me at the AAT hearing.

Appearing as a witness will help exonerate the players and go a small way to remove the Lady Macbeth nightmares that you and the board members must experience nightly.

To me, it is incomprehensible and unconscionable that you and the board concede that the players were stitched up, yet feel no need to go into bat for them or to work to recover Jobe Watson’s Brownlow Medal.

 You know, and I know, and ASADA’s head investigator Aaron Walker knows, and ASADA CEO David Sharpe knows and Gillon McDonald knows, that there isn’t a scintilla of evidence that either Stephen Dank or an Essendon official ever took possession of Thymosin Beta-4. 

Nothing else matters. If there were no evidence of Dank-Essendon ever having received Thymosin Beta-4, res ipsa loquitur, the players should not have been found ‘guilty’.

 Your shameful comment that it is the players and AFL Players Association’s responsibility, and not the board’s, to fight to correct the greatest injustice in Australian sporting history, is reprehensible and defies belief. 

Your failure to tell the world that a senior Australian sports official, who you named to me on the record, pressured WADA to appeal the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal ‘NOT GUILTY’ verdict is just as disgraceful and staggering.

 As I am now required to send Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) a list of the witnesses I intend calling, I should appreciate it if you would confirm by return email that you will appear as a witness for me.

 Bruce Francis

My Comment

Campbell not only refused to appear for me but briefed ASADA’s lawyer to challenge my request to issue him a subpoena.