No fallout from report

Former Australian chief nuclear boffin Ziggy Switkowski’s report into the goings on at Bomberland in 2012 hasn’t claimed any immediate scalps, and AussieRulesBlog hopes and expects that it won’t in the longer term either.

 

The report is not a surprise as most of the background has been publicly aired through the media. No doubt Caroline Wilson will demand that the Governor-General be sacked.

 

Switkowski’s recommendations do raise some interesting areas for debate however, prime among them being the extent to which “non-football” administrators oversight and manage the football department.

 

None of Switkowski’s recommendations are revolutionary, especially in the aftermath of the supplements investigation, but it’s quite clear that the ground has shifted beneath the feet of AFL clubs. We probably knew that already, but this report puts it into black and white.

 

From the outside, it’s hard not to wonder at the extent to which the supplements were involved in the departure of former player Paul Hamilton from his role as football department manager last year.

 

It’s also hard to imagine, in the pre-supplements affair world, that CEO Ian Robson would feel himself ultimately responsible for the goings on in the football department.

 

Perhaps the most interesting of Switkowski’s recommendations is the first, where he mentions an “arms race” for on-field advantage. Leigh Matthews commented recently that, as a coach, he would have been intensely interested in anything that might give his team an edge. If anyone thought that any of the eighteen coaches would be any less keen than Matthews to find the key to unlock some advantage before the supplements affair became the biggest story in the news, then they’re dreaming.

 

Essendon may have been the club caught in the cross-hairs, but it would have been only a matter of months before every club at AFL level were looking closely at what they could do to compete with the Bombers’ perceived advantage (if they weren’t already, as suggested by the Carlton and Melbourne links already mentioned in the media).