NICK MCKENZIE AND RICHARD BAKER

Corrupt actions by ASADA, WADA and CAS notwithstanding, the information contained in the 20,000 plus pages the Herald Sun had access to, indicates that Age journalists Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker, through changing the permitted Thymosin to the banned Thymosin Beta-4, were most responsible for the unjust guilty findings for the 34 Essendon players.

Although there isn’t a skerrick of evidence that Dank/Essendon ever took possession of the banned substance Thymosin Beta-4, and therefore, could not have administered it to the players, McKenzie, Baker and the irrelevant to the issue Shane Charter were the only ones who claimed to have heard the word Thymosin Beta-4 come out of Stephen Dank’s mouth.

Charter acknowledged Dank’s retraction that he meant ‘Thymosin’ but McKenzie and Baker turned it into a Walkley winning joke worthy of the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

McKenzie interviewed Dank by the telephone on the 1 April 2013. As an aside, then ASADA CEO Aurora Andruska’s daybook/diary indicated that she knew details about the interview on 4 April 2013, which poses the questions, how, and did ASADA and the Age have an arrangement?

The Age published an article under the McKenzie-Baker by-line on 11 August 2013. How Baker got a guernsey is yet to be established. Perhaps, through the noticeable abolition of the sub-editor’s department, Baker has been assigned as McKenzie’s red pencil man!

The article contained a major revelation and a key claim that was changed in subsequent articles based on the same 1 April 2013 interview. 

While commenting on Hird’s alleged use of a permitted substance, McKenzie and his red pencil man said: “Information gathered by ASADA corroborates this.” As an aside, it was very kind of ASADA to share highly confidential information with McKenzie. Perhaps, a quid pro quo for Andruska’s recording in her diary on 4 April 2013 about details of McKenzie’s 1 April 2013 interview with Dank seven days before the article was published! Sadly, we don’t know, but if it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and walks like a duck.

The McKenzie-Baker article contained 1285 words. Thymosin, which is used as the generic name for the permitted Thymosin Alpha-1/Thymomodulin, appeared twice in the article at words 481 and 925 – “Records of Hird and Dank’s dealing reveal that the coach knew specific details about the supplement regime, … including an immune booster known as thymosin.”

The second reference to thymosin – “When asked why thymosin peptides were given to players as an immune system booster …” – ultimately posed a greater threat to McKenzie and Baker’s reputation. One, McKenzie told Dank what he was using rather than asked what he was using. Second, Dank’s response confirmed he was talking about Thymosin (Thymomodulin) and not Thymosin Beta-4. 

In the biggest backflip since Prime Minister Gillard reneged on her promise that there would be no carbon tax in a government led by her, McKenzie and Baker decided in subsequent articles based on the 1 April 2013 interview, that Dank had said he used Thymosin Beta-4 and not Thymosin. Clearly, it is incomprehensible that on such a crucial issue McKenzie got it so wrong on 11 April 2013 but got it right on 5 July 2013.

Whatever McKenzie’s excuse was for changing Thymosin to Thymosin Beta-4, it was impossible without some chicanery from WADA for an objective CAS panel to be comfortably satisfied that McKenzie was wrong on 11 April 2013 and right on 5 July 2013. 

In an extraordinary breach of its legal responsibilities, ASADA did not table the 11 April 2013 article in discovery. Problem of McKenzie’s confusion solved. 

Alternatively, the evidence may suggest that McKenzie had decided who he was batting for by 5 July 2013. The suggestion that McKenzie and Baker may have been barracking for ASADA and a conviction for the 34 Essendon players became a tiger’s roar with the publication of their 16 December 2013 article. Inter alia, McKenzie and Baker said: “Emails between senior staff reveal Essendon’s plans to continue its supplements programme until 2013 …” and “Under Robinson’s plan … one of the drugs to be injected fortnightly two days before a game was the anti-dementia drug Cerebrolysin.”

Unconscionably, McKenzie and Baker forgot to mention that the email, which confirmed ASADA was still sharing confidential information with them, also stated that the players would be given the permitted Thymomodulin injections. It was incomprehensible that McKenzie and Baker omitted evidence that helped prove the players’ innocence.