The issuing of infraction notices against 34 current and former Essendon players relating to the alleged administration of a banned supplement indicates that this saga, for the players at least, has entered its final formal stages. Essendon members and fans should be relieved that events have proceeded to this point. There is a light at the end of the tunnel— and it's not a speeding train!

It's likely that, in the event that the infraction is proven to the "comfortable satisfaction" of the AFL Tribunal, any penalties will be relatively slight, as they were for the NRL Cronulla Sharks players. This will be based on a no-fault finding — that is, the players were not aware they were being administered a banned substance and in fact had good reason to be convinced they were not.

AussieRulesBlog fears that a significant number of people in the football world will see such a result as a failure of the system.

For some, fans with a hatred of the Bombers (for whatever reason, logical or not), only a decimation of the club will satisfy. Most assuredly, were the shoe on their foot, they'd sing a different tune. Jobe Watson will be booed for the remainder of his career for the simple crime of having been adjudged the best player in the competition in a year in which his club was administering these supplements, regardless of them being non–performance-enhancing. It was, and will be, ever thus. Most football fans aren't fielding recruiting calls from Mensa.

Some, media pundits who've conducted a vitriolic campaign against coach James Hird and the club's administration, we suspect won't be satisfied while Hird remains officially associated with the club and the current Board remain substantially in place. Irrespective of evidence, or of logical reasoning, they'll continue to howl. May their throats become raw with the strain of maintaining their prejudiced and irrational rage.

For the rest, a further layer of the already microscopically-thin layer of gloss on our game has been worn away.

Don't rush to pillory James Hird, or the club. They didn't intend for any (allegedly) banned substances to be (allegedly) administered and wouldn't have condoned that action had they known of it, and they almost certainly weren't the only club engaged in a potentially-compromised supplements program. It's the nature of a competitive professional sport with substantial investment, and even more substantial rewards to the successful, that envelopes will be stretched and boundaries tested.

Why does the AFL persist with entering a camel in the Melbourne Cup? Sure, the camel has four legs, and it can carry a rider, but that doesn't make it a champion stayer.

The “International Rules” series commencing later this month pits Australian Rules against Gaelic football, with both hobbled. No amount of fiddling will produce an even contest. If the Aussies can't exploit their advantage in physical agression, the Irish will use their superior skills with the round ball to win — and vice versa.

The notion that the Australian players are representing their country in this confected curiosity is fanciful and playing out of training simply increases the risk of injury. None of it makes sense. There aren't huge crowds, so there's no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

At least among the sources AussieRulesBlog listened to, there seemed to be a certain unanimity that Brendan McCartney was doing a terrific job at Whitten Oval and the future looked quite bright.

Despite Chairman Peter Gordon's protestations, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the tail was wagging the dog when the Western Bulldogs did nothing, at least in public, to dissuade their coach from submitting his resignation.

It's hardly a surprise that in mid-November, the club still has not appointed a replacement. Who would put their hand up for the job?

It's three-quarter time and the Bulldogs are ten points down. How does the coach appeal to the players to put in an extra effort? It seems the senior players didn't take kindly to being told they needed to lift, so who could you appeal to? Ask the Chairman to give the address and kindly ask the players if they wouldn't mind trying just a smidgin harder?

For years, AussieRulesBlog has had a soft spot for the team of the mighty west, but we fear for its future in the wake of this post-season schemozzle.

The Crows may have been caught with their pants down after sacking Brenton Sanderson only to find favourite son Simon Goodwin was signing up with Roosy, but they quickly got on with things. Perhaps the Bulldogs don't have any applicants?

This post is dedicated to Nikki.

At a semi-private function recently, the MC referred to AussieRulesBlog as a “tragic Essendon supporter” — a bit much coming from a committed Melbourne supporter, but we’ll let that alone for the moment.

As a lifelong Bombers fan, the past couple of years have been quite difficult. Not nearly as difficult, we hasten to add, as the Essendon players, Danny Corcoran, Mark Thompson, Dr Bruce Reid and James Hird have had to endure. Nevertheless, the constant speculation reporting on the supplements scandal program have encouraged humorous kindergarten-style barbs directed at us — the bigger “us” that includes players, coaches, staff, board, employees, members and fans — wear one down and diminish our affection for and enjoyment of the game.

Notwithstanding those issues, we attended as many games as normal in the past two years, watched as many games as usual on TV and consumed more than our fair share of footy media while avoiding the ambulance-chasers peddling the most strident anti-Essendon agendas.

All this has had its effect on AussieRulesBlog — this blog, not our online persona. Our practice had degenerated into, largely, commenting on media stories. There's only so many times we can write that the head football writer of The Age (an appointment that continues to baffle us) is pursuing an irrational agenda. So, we stopped writing altogether.

It's time for AussieRulesBlog to be reborn. The supplements saga still has some way to run and, no doubt, we'll be writing about it again, but our intention is to comment on issues without reference to the speculative media.

It's footy’s quiet time, but we're sure we can find something to write about. Now, how many years is it since Melbourne’s last Premiership?

It seems like there may be only two people who aren’t enjoying the way the game is being umpired. Well, two with a public forum anyway.

Kevin Bartlett and Patrick Smith seem fixated on the game being umpired to the exact letter of the law, splitting hairs on the placement of commas and counting the angels dancing on every full stop.

For the rest of us, the game is flowing and the annoying 50-50 free kicks that annoyed almost everybody have been consigned to the dustbin. Obvious free kicks are being awarded (when they’re seen) and the game is a better spectacle for it.

Congratulations Wayne Campbell and Hayden Kennedy, and good riddance Jeff Gieschen.

Apparently Taylor Hunt is unlucky for being suspended for bumping Daniel Rich and initiating a head clash. It seems he was only “shepherding”.

AussieRulesBlog is no spring chicken, but when we were learning the game, a “shepherd” meant spreading your arms and trying to hold an opponent away from a teammate who had the ball.

What Hunt did was to pick off an unprepared opponent who didn’t have the ball and wasn’t in a position to intercept. It doesn’t matter how close the ball was. This is not a shepherd. It’s sniping. It’s cowardly. End of story.

Much consternation about AFL scheduling this week. Rohan Connolly has picked up on scheduling as one reason for clearly lower attendances, but the AFL has a hospital handball cocked ready to avoid being caught holding the ball.

AussieRulesBlog was posting about critics of a 30-minute delayed broadcast back in 2009 and it has been a couple of years now that we’ve had wall-to-wall live football.

Not so long ago, live broadcast was THE biggest issue in AFL football. So many people HAD TO HAVE the game broadcast live, because they couldn’t avoid a news source for two and a half hours.

Given that the game takes around 2.5 hours to get started and then play itself out, there are limited slots available so that all games will be broadcast live to air.

THAT’s why we have games scheduled at 7.10pm on Sunday nights — that and the power of particular clubs to pull a primetime TV audience.

The hospital handball? Vlad will say the AFL have only done what the fans demanded.

Who’s the luckiest player in the AFL this week? Probably the Blues’ Jarrad Waite.

If you don’t have Foxtel’s Comedy Channel and you haven’t had a laugh for a while, check out Waite’s Oscar-worthy performance from last Thursday night.

Click the image to view the video. Scroll forward to about 2:50 for the big show.

Why is he lucky? Well, young Jarrad has form. AussieRulesBlog outed him for a very similar incident back in 2010.

A bit of a one-trick pony, is Jarrad. It’s a pity for the Blues that the trick isn’t playing consistent footy.

The first quarter of last year’s season opener was a heart-pumping, hard-running goalfest. Last night’s 2014 season opener began in gripping style, but wasn’t a goalfest in any sense. The Barcodes and the Dockers armwrestled for 30 minutes before the Barcode defence burst asunder like a dam wall and the Docker goals flowed freely.

Over recent years we’ve become accustomed to a Blues-Tiggers opener, and these too have mostly failed to live up to the hype.

After a five-month hiatus, it’s unsurprising that our expectations get ahead of reality. But 2014 has had an extra dimension with the pre-season “challenge” offering few clues as to which teams are up and running and which are foxing.

After game one, one thing is certain. The Dockers are looking ominous.

For the Barcodes, on the other hand, it’s a hard ask to believe that Didak, Thomas, Shaw and Jolley would have kept the dam wall in one piece. Reid and putative Barcode-debutant White wouldn’t have made the difference either.

And it’s clear the Barcode faithful don’t have Foxtel, because they were incensed that the umpires weren’t umpiring to the 2013 “Gieschen” interpretations. The trend begun in the pre-season, with umpires umpiring games as though they are Grand Finals, continued into game one of the home and away rounds.

What a refreshing change to enjoy the football rather than rant and rave about over-zealous umpires!

Starved of genuinely competitive football, AussieRulesBlog has been watching round one of the NRL's 2014  season.

Craig Bellamy is a genius and Cam Smith should be awarded the keys to the city of Melbourne.

The thing that had struck us is the number of video reviews. Apparently there have been rule changes for 2014 designed to speed up the game. Sadly for RL aficionados, whatever benefits may have accrued from the rule changes, the unwillingness of the referees to make a decision on tries means that the game is developing a stop-start nature that no-one can think is good.

There's a lesson here for Mark Evans, the AFL's football operations boss. The crowd and the television audience are fed up with interminable video reviews. We want the officials to make a decision. That's what they're paid to do.

AussieRulesBlog is seeking expressions of interest from suitably equipped entrepreneurs for the secure carriage of mountains of cash to the live AFL games we attend in 2014. We attended our first game of the season this week at the Docklands Stadium and received our usual early-season shock at the “catering” outlet.

The indignity of paying for the equivalent of liquid gold dispensed in plastic cups was reinforced when we sought something to sate our hunger. $5.60 for an “Angus” pie! We can purchase FOUR of these same pies at the online supermarket for $8.27.

How is it that an organisation buying in bulk — the AFL’s “caterers” — can add 170% to the price of the same product in an online supermarket? We assume the online supermarkets aren’t retailing at cost, so there’s already a significant markup built into their pricing structure.

Our companion fared even worse, parting with a princely $9 for an indifferent sandwich that had spent half a lifetime in its packaging.

We’ve already scheduled an appointment with the bank manager to arrange overdraft facilities for our next visit.

Not content with fleecing us for food and beverages, venue management chose to play the game in semi-darkness, with the goals at each end a nightmare of half-shadows — and that’s just for spectators!

Doing their bit for non-existent anthropogenic climate change, no doubt.

Oh, the football? No great heights, but it was a practice match after all.

It’s somewhat amusing that Alastair Clarkson feels it appropriate to comment about James Hird and the supplements program at Essendon.

It was, after all, Hawthorn who in September 2012 were being promoted in The Age as the innovative leaders in using injections to speed the recovery of injured players.

Let’s also remember that eleven or twelve other clubs have been fingered as having run supplements programs not dissimilar to Essendon’s and with the same administrative and governance inadequacies. It was the AFL’s own doctor who made this public.

It’s a reasonable assumption that Hawthorn were among the clubs found to have been nudging the boundaries.

And Clarkson would have us believe he would have stopped Hird in his tracks, had he had the opportunity? Pull the other one Alastair.

And Jeff Kennett’s now-expected ‘rent-a-quote’ does nothing to shore up Clarkson’s position, not least because it’s the coach he wanted to move on a year ago that he’s now anointing as a seer.

Watching the Demons take on the Tigers and the thing we notice most is, paradoxically, that we're not noticing the umpires.

We also caught a couple of quarters of the Hawks demolishing the Lions. Similarly, we didn't notice the whistle blowers.

It's so good to be able to concentrate on the footy. As we noted a few days ago, the new bosses of the AFL's umpiring department look to have stamped their authority on the competition. Good stuff.

The new Demons showed a spirit and composure that was never in evidence over the past couple of years. Plenty for Melbourne fans to look forward to.

For the Tigers it was Groundhog Day. Skill errors were telling. They might tease again without making the transition into a good football side.

Despite the first dumb video referral of the year, the opening game of pre-season is a beauty (for those of us with Foxtel).

But the most remarkable aspect was the almost complete invisibility of the field umpires -- and there were four of them on the field.

Over recent years, we've become accustomed to the umpires blitzing on one rule or another in the early rounds and pre-season, sometimes two. Players, commentary teams and fans would all be bemused.

If this more sensible approach is an effect of the Wayne Cambell and Hayden Kennedy (umpires coach) leadership, AussieRulesBlog is pretty pleased with the result.

The dumb video referral was to check if a ball was completely across the goal line before being touched. Sharp readers will note that the video referral system was introduced ostensibly for just those decisions. Sadly, there have almost never been cameras trained along the goal line, and such was the case at Kardinua Park tonight. Surely the goal umpire must be aware that there are no goal line cameras. It´s a pointless exercise to call for a review.

In the end, we can't quibble overall. It's great to have footy back!

… and all through the house, nothing was stirring, not even a . . .

OK, hang on! There’s a fair bit stirring ‘round AussieRulesBlog’s abode. Less than twenty-four hours until the first bounce of the pre-season.

F O O T Y  I S   B A C K !

We’re pleased that the AFL will be explaining the new rules to fans via the scoreboard. It seems like it’ll only be before the pre-season games, which means many will miss it. But it’s a step in the right direction. Hopefully the broadcaster(s?) will pick up the ball and show the explanations to their viewers.

If we could send a message to Wayne Campbell, the AFL’s new umpiring department boss, it would be to be proactive in getting information out to the football public. Most fans won’t order a DVD, or search out the labyrinthine explanations of interpretations favoured by The (unlamented)Giesch.

The message needs to be simple and unequivocal. Most importantly, it needs to be reinforced out on the field by the way the umpires officiate the game — every game, every month, from the first bounce tomorrow night to the last bounce on Grand Final day.

We don’t care how wrong the decisions are. Just give us that consistency. No doubt the players will be crossing their fingers for that too.

Breakfast everywhere! What else could we do? After a year of undisguised prejudice, someone has written the following lead paragraph under Caroline Wilson's byline"

"To give James Hird the benefit of the doubt, there is no evidence to suggest that he sanctioned the ill-informed spin doctor Ian Hanke to launch a Twitter rant over the weekend against Essendon chairman Paul Little."

“THE AFL has introduced a raft of changes to its anti-doping code after a year of controversy, with a ban now in place on injections unless they are required to treat a medical condition.”

Interesting. So, is a broken foot a medical condition? Probably.

So a pain-killing injection administered by a qualified medical practitioner would be OK.

But wouldn’t that be performance-enhancing?

Some quite fine hairs being split.

Far be it for AussieRulesBlog to be critical before the first bounce, but what is AFL Football Operations boss Mark Evans smoking?

Apparently, having multiple pictures on one screen improves the rate of “conclusive” video review decisions.

Pull the other one, Mark.

Let’s get this straight. If an umpire makes a dumb call and asks for a video review for touched off the boot, a million SD pictures on the screen aren’t going to get to a conclusive review. Technology can’t compensate for stupidity.

The same report on the AFL website suggests they are well down the road toward installing goalpost cameras. ABOUT TIME, YOU DUNDERHEADS! We assume they’ll point them along the goal line . . .

The pre-season “challenge” will show whether Evans has used the off-season well or not.

Fingers crossed.

For AussieRulesBlog, the Australian (tennis) Open is sports valium — guaranteed to send us bye-byes in seconds flat. Nevertheless, we see bits and pieces here and there and Bernard Tomic is not unknown to us.

The boos that greeted Tomic’s retirement against Nadal set us to thinking about expectation and how precocious talents manage it.

Let’s start with a familiar refrain for this blog: precocious talents don’t, for the most part, ask for or desire the expectations that are heaped on them — no matter what the sport.

In tennis, the polar opposites have to be Tomic and Lleyton Hewitt. Both young and talented, both brashly confident, both burdened with the expectations of a public ready to forgive the mis-steps of a successful player.

Like him or not, Hewitt leaves it ALL on the court, every time. It seems the public may have made its mind up on Tomic.

Time to wake up! We’ve finished talking tennis.

AFL players are also burdened with expectations, and the footy public similarly aren’t forgiving of those they judge to have fallen short.

Tom Scully and Jack Watts come to mind as much-touted talents who, thus far, haven’t delivered on the bigger stage of the AFL. Expectation is a millstone for these players.

By contrast, the likes of Dyson Heppell, Daniel Rich and Jack Ziebell follow the Hewitt model and give their all — no millstones here; these guys welcome the expectations and deliver.

There’s another type too. These are hyped, but in an understated way, often burdened by expectations they’re in no position to control. It’s no secret that Jobe Watson’s career was teetering when he discovered something inside himself that has driven him to captain his club, win a Brownlow Medal and stamp himself as an elite midfielder.

From the same club, and also with a famous father, Jay Neagle didn’t find that inner drive that Watson found and failed to meet those expectations.

Will Scully and Watts find something to help them fulfil a substantial portion of the potential they showed at under-age? Will they be “Jobe Watson”s or “Jay Neagle”s?

And will Tomic discover within himself a way to meet the expectation he didn’t ask for (but hasn’t shied away from embracing)?

It’s one of the biggest questions in life. Why do some people find the drive to succeed, while others languish. If we could find and bottle that drive — we would have used it on ourselves long ago!!

We’re breathlessly awaiting the banner headlines that Cats coach Chris Scott is a racist. He must be, because The Age reports today that he thinks the new interchange cap will favour endurance athletes.

The last time this completely outrageous suggestion was made, its proponents were quickly labelled racist.

Those proponents, Paul Roos and James Hird, dared to voice the additional assessment that Aboriginal footballers generally might not have the endurance capacity of their non-Aboriginal counterparts.

It can’t be long before the headline appears . . .  We’re waiting . . . .