The announcement on Tuesday that Essendon Football Club had called in the AFL and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority in relation to supplements administered to some players in 2012 has created a tsunami of speculation. Fair enough. It’s a big issue and the implications are potentially devastating.

Sadly, some of the reporting has barely reached rudimentary. An example is Greg Baum’s story in The Age today.

There’s one crucial part of the story that suggests only the most rudimentary research has been done before writing. Baum writes:

Speculation centres on something called peptide. On ASADA's list, it is banned as a substance, in and out of competition, but permissible as a ''product''.

Last year, says ASADA's register, three Queensland amateur rugby players were caught in possession of, using and/or trafficking peptide, and suspended for two to four years.

There’s a lot in common between this story and the apparently magical special ingredients supposedly found in many women’s cosmetics. Take a simple word from chemistry that few average people would be familiar with, and dress it up as something extraordinary.

There is no “substance” called peptide. A peptide is a short chain of amino acids linked by a particular type of bond — a peptide bond, as it happens. A polypeptide is a long, unbroken chain of peptides. Polypeptides are the building blocks of proteins. Proteins are everywhere in organic chemistry. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peptide

AussieRulesBlog found this information in about 45 seconds.

Why is this important? Baum’s clear implication is that Essendon players have been using, perhaps inadvertently, a banned substance. The fact is that eating a steak is taking peptides, because the muscle tissue in the steak is built from proteins — which are made up of peptides.

The second part of Baum’s assertion focuses on the implications of taking a banned substance. “Peptide…” says Baum, “… is on ASADA’s list… [and] …is banned as a substance.” Well, that’s sort of true, but a long way from the full story.

A small number of very specific peptides are on ASADA’s list.

It’s immediately clear why this issue is big. These banned peptides are responsible for promoting the release of growth hormone which induces the user’s body to create more muscle mass.

Regular readers will know that AussieRulesBlog is a passionate Bombers supporter. We are not defending Essendon, because we don’t know what is happening behind closed doors.

Notwithstanding our own club loyalties, we would expect a senior journalist to have spent the couple of minutes we spent in researching and to be able to inform his readership more effectively than mimicking a cosmetics commercial. It’s a reflection on the quality of the journalism that the story wasn’t written in that way.

As an unfortunate side issue, we were mildly concerned when the Bombers’ 2013 membership collateral began appearing emblazoned with the tagline “Whatever it takes”. We’re betting that someone is wishing they’d knocked back that brazen proposition in favour of something less . . . provocative.

As a Bombers fan, we hope the Bombers are found to be clean. As a football fan, we’re wondering about the trajectory of the game we love. “Whatever it takes” implies an ends justify the means attitude that thumbs its nose at rules and regulations. The Bombers aren’t alone in the mindspace to move heaven and earth to achieve success. In the sport as big business era, success seems to be everything and AussieRulesBlog isn’t sure that’s a good place to be. That must sound rather trite to a Bulldogs or Demons fan.

The spectre of clubs doing less than their utmost in pursuit of a specific goal isn’t new. Priority draft picks almost mandated those actions. Success, or at least a vision of the future that promises a realistic chance of success, seems to be a ‘fix’ that few can deny themselves.

Despite more comfortable stadiums, despite fitter and stronger and more skillful professional players, despite the depredations of the ‘outer’ at suburban football grounds and standing freezing in the rain on the hill, we really miss those days when success was enjoyed, but we were almost as well pleased just to see our boys give a good account of themselves.

Whatever it takes? We’re not sure we want to buy that product.

One thing’s for sure: Aussie Rules stirs passions and passionate opinion. And then there’s what you can see with your own two eyes.

Both sliding tackles and ‘drive’ tackles have generated a fair degree of hyperbole since the weekend and, frankly, AussieRulesBlog is bemused by it all.

If you can take your eyes off Gary Rohan’s leg being snapped, it’s as clear as day that Lindsay Thomas isn’t executing a slide tackle, albeit that his right knee is on the ground as his left foot impacts Rohan’s leg.

Contrast Thomas’ position with that of Adam Goodes executing the definitive slide tackle that saw him suspended.

The clear difference is that Goodes is leading the ‘tackle’ with both knees and using his knees and legs to impact his opponent. Thomas’ position is clearly and obviously not a slide tackle.

Rohan’s awful injury was nothing more than unfortunate circumstance. Not only are the media guilty of hyperbole, the Match Review Panel seem, most unfortunately in our view, to feel bound to cite almost any incident that excites controversy.

The other incident sending some into overblown hyperbole — especially Brett Ratten — is Sam Lonergan’s tackle of Andrew Carrazzo. Regular readers will already be aware of our affection for the Bombers, but we declare it again here.

Lonergan no more drove Carazzo into the turf than we are the blogging equivalent of William Shakespeare! Fell into his back? Yes. Drove him into the tackle? Absolutely not. It was unhappy circumstance, once again, which saw Carazzo’s arm in such a position when it crashed into the turf that it caused a fracture in the shoulder blade.

Ironically, the player AussieRulesBlog would most associate with tackles intentionally driving an opponent’s shoulder into the turf is none other than the Blues’ own Jarrad Waite.

Simply, much of the florid controversy is knee jerk reaction, often driven by passionate support of one team or player or another. We can forgive fans, although the AFL should be taking steps to educate people, but overblown media reactions from the footy journalists is quite another thing.

Caroline Wilson’s rant against Paul Roos and James Hird today is another example — as if one were needed — of a journalist taking the most extreme and controversial construction of a comment and constructing a story to suit.

To suggest, as Wilson explicitly does, that either Roos or Hird have advocated race-based selection from the comments they made is mischevious at best.

Their comments referred to the AFL’s move to a two interchange, two substitute bench. Roos and Hird observed that a further reduction in interchanges would force recruiters and coaches to value endurance above skill. They further observed that indigenous players, generally, were high on skill, but less well-endowed with endurance and may thus be impacted by the change.

Quite how this equates to advocating race-based selection eludes AussieRulesBlog.

Not for the first time, Wilson’s instinct is to go for a sensationalist angle. It might make for ‘interesting’ and ‘provocative’ comment, but it sure ain’t journalism.

Continuing the theme, AussieRulesBlog spied this item on Foxsports ‘News’ page:

News? Who do they think they’re kidding? Undignified voyeurism at best.

This in The Age this morning:

ESSENDON is content with the progress it is making in contract talks with Michael Hurley, but it appears that the club does not want the star forward talking to the public about his future.

A media contingent at yesterday's NAB Cup launch expected to speak to the 21-year-old, who was a guest at the function held at his old club, the Macleod Junior Football Club.

Instead, the Bombers sent football manager Paul Hamilton at the last minute to field questions, most of which centred on Hurley's future beyond 2012.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/bombers-believe-hurley-will-stay-20120214-1t467.html#ixzz1mPOvdV7A

As with reporting on the Federal political scene in recent years, it seems sports journalists have become fixated on sensation and controversy, often of their own making, to the exclusion of simply reporting.

Last year it was Tom Scully, every bloody week!!! Is it to be Michael Hurley this year? Can’t you vultures in the media simply wait until an announcement is made? Why do you have to speculate each and every week? You’re our conduit into the outskirts of the inner sanctums. Don’t spoil it by ignoring what there is to report in favour of writing speculative crap about your hobby horse topic. The football public deserve better than that from you.

Perhaps at the function mentioned in The Age’s story, the media contingent could have asked some questions about the pre-season competition? That is, after all, what the function was about. And then you have the hide to complain when Essendon protect their young star from the sort of bullying, pestering behaviour that seems to pass for journalism these days. Un-[expletive]-believable.

AussieRulesBlog isn’t the first to mention this, and we’re sure we won’t be the last, but judgements on players’ and coaches’ performances can only properly be judged from the context of each club’s inner sanctum.

We’re moved to mention this after watching On the Couch last night. Chris Scott, rookie Geelong coach, was in the chair and was questioned by Mike Sheahan about his post-match comments about Steve Johnson.

Sheahan’s point was that Johnson had gathered 21 possessions and kicked seven goals. What, he wondered, could Scott have been upset about.

And here’s the nub of the problem. The media’s focus is on the tangible elements of the game. If Johnson had gathered only 7 possessions and kicked 7 goals, Sheahan and his media colleagues would still have been in raptures.

Scott prefaced his answer to Sheahan by making the point that, internally, the club judged players’ performance by measures other than raw possessions. It’s about the often-invisible, so-called “one-percenters” such as positioning at a stoppage, picking up a loose opponent, running to block a space, unrewarded running and the like.

The truth of the matter is that we cannot judge players or coaches because we aren’t privy to the detailed instructions and game planning, the training drills and team meetings, the match committee and boardroom discussions. Without that context, it’s all more-or-less uneducated guesswork.

Of course there’s a place for the media, but it would be nice if they were, generally, less obsessed with statistics and more concerned with context and nuance. Among the chief stat obsessors is (Captain Obvious) Robert Walls, and the standout for context and nuance is Dermott Brereton.

I would encourage AussieRulesBlog readers to take media hyperbole over stats with a very large pinch of salt and think about context and nuance.

Handwringing over the apparently hacked release of an Essendon web video of recruiting manager Adrian Dodoro extolling the virtues of Shaun Atley simply doesn’t pass the logic test.

It’s pretty obvious that the Bombers thought the best player they could expect to be available at pick 8 was Atley. When Dyson Heppell hadn’t been called to that point, they decided to reassess.

Hence the expected drafting of Atley was replaced by the unexpected drafting of Heppell. Not too hard to figure out, we think. And hardly an embarrassment for the club. More mainstream media hyperbole.

Back in the mists of time — 4 November 2010 to be precise; less than a week ago — Michael Gleeson wrote this in The Age:

[Mark] Thompson is expected to be appointed by Essendon this week, probably today, in an assistant coaching role with the Bombers after quitting the Cats on October 4.  . . . Essendon is understood to have only been waiting on chief executive Ian Robson to return to work before making the announcement.

James Hird says it would be great to have Mark Thompson join his new-look Essendon coaching staff, while insisting the two-time Geelong premiership mentor has yet to sign a deal with the Bombers.

No, not a cricket story about Mitchell Johnson bowling a no ball!

It’s typical of self-appointed guardians of society like Neil Mitchell that they take it upon themselves to flout conventions, regulations or orders protecting the identities of those suspected of some criminal activity.

Of course, there’s more than enough precedent in everyday media. Television news broadcasts routinely name people being arrested or being taken into custody, often even when pixellating their images.

It’s reasonable to ask why high-profile footballers should be treated any differently.

But the real point is that NO-ONE should have their name broadcast before being found guilty.

This principle is even more applicable in accusations of sexual assault which can turn on the participants’ varying understanding of consent as it applied in the context of the alleged assault.

Let’s be clear that there should be no quarter allowed if the assault is proven to the satisfaction of the law and that the victim must be protected as far as possible from further harm.

But let’s also be clear that those accused or suspected of sexual assault are entitled to not bear the opprobrium if the case is not proven.

For at least some sections of the community, Steven Milne, Leigh Montagna and Andrew Lovett will be considered sexual predators whether charges were/are sustained or not.

It is reasonable and right to guard the identity of the females involved in these cases. It should also be reasonable and right to similarly guard the identities of the males involved up to the point that they are convicted.

No conviction, no ‘name and shame’.

Usually, at AussieRulesBlog, we confine ourselves to footy and footy-related issues. However the unsavoury rush to report news of Matthew Stokes’ criminal charges has us thinking in more societal terms.

Let us start by recalling that the AFL has a three-strike drugs policy for players caught using recreational or illicit drugs. Briefly, players’ identities are protected until a third offence, giving them a rare chance, in the AFL world at least, of reform without the glare of publicity.

Recently the news media and blogosphere became frantic on reporting that Essendon’s Nathan Lovett-Murray had been picked up by the police for questioning on a drug-related matter. Had officialdom taken any notice of the blogosphere in particular, Lovett-Murray would have been hung, drawn and quartered that very day.

Of course, police later reported they were satisfied that an ecstasy tablet found in Lovett-Murray’s home belonged to someone else.

More recently, the blogosphere rushed to report charges of trafficking against Matthew Stokes. It emerged that Stokes had purchased a small quantity of drugs for a friend and had been caught in a police phone-tapping operation.

Had Stokes used the drug and been caught by the AFL’s testing program, we would be none the wiser.

It is dangerous to engage in applying our everyday notions out of context, but with that caveat in place we should do so.

In our view, ‘trafficking’ represents commercial resale of the substance with the aim of securing an advantage, whether that be in cash or kind. Stokes, it seems to us, did a questionable favour for someone he knew. He didn’t use the substance, nor did he benefit from the transaction (that we know of).

With enough time for sober reflection and fuller details, most of the blogosphere would have moderated their comments on these specific incidents.

AussieRulesBlog consciously does not try to be some sort of unofficial news feed, and doesn’t carry a news feed widget, simply because the sensationalist nature of twenty-first century news often obscures the real story in hyperbole.

Sadly, for those caught up in the news circus, the old adage that if enough mud is thrown some will stick seems to hold true. Blog posts and comments are, to all intents and purposes, permanent and continue to vent their hyperbolic blood lust long after they’ve been forgotten by the writers.

As we noted at the start of this post, these are not uniquely footy-related issues, but symptomatic of a harsher, less caring, more judgemental society, fed on fear by big media desperate for ever more threatening ‘news’ to spark their ratings.

I noted, with barely-concealed disgust, the apparent war of words being slugged out between TV chef Ramsay and ACA doberwoman Grimshaw in the online newspapers. As I marvelled at ACA's fantastic capacity to claim the high moral ground and label others as lowlife, it occurred to me that something similar has almost become the norm in footy circles.

It was, perhaps, not coincidental that it was Channel Ten who regaled us with the now-famous footage of Ben Cousins flipping the bird. This is the same broadcaster that brought us such cerebral delights as Big Brother, whose weekly prime time roster currently includes NCIS × 2, Law & Order: SVU × 2 and Law & Order: Criminal Intent × 2 — that's six grisly murders — and they're outraged by a footballer raising a finger in what he would assume is the privacy of the dressing room?

For everyone who hyperventilated over Cousins, get over it! The football media could show us many more shocking images, tell many more shocking stories about many other footballers; Cousins is simply an easy target.

The furore this week over the broadcast by Channel Ten of the Tigers-Blues game has been mystifying.

If you're only interested in listening to the TV commentary[ :-( ], what difference does 30 minutes' delay make?

If you're keen to avoid Hudson, Lane, Quartermain, et al and listen to the radio commentary, with umpires now kitted out with microphones, on 'live' TV there's a delay so that "F**k!" can be bleeped by the techos in the OB van, so the pictures and the radio commentary are disturbingly out of synch.

If someone at the game is going to ring you to sing the winning team's song (I haven't forgotten, CJP!!) or gloat, don't answer the phone or look at text messages.

All the bleating about LIVE coverage is a waste of effort.

Caroline Wilson figures in two incidents this week which have raised my ire. Unusually for Ms Wilson, she's not the provocateur in either.

The other night, somewhat at a loss for something to watch (having Foxtel Platinum doesn't guarantee watchable programming!), I tuned into Footy Confidential (sorry, should be Classified) for the second time — ever. Perhaps, with Craig Hutchison involved, it should be renamed Footy Confrontational. Hutchison launched into Caroline Wilson with a question concerning her sharing the panel with Grant Thomas who, according to Hutchison, Wilson had arranged to be sacked from The Age.

I carry no brief or any great affection for Wilson. She plays for keeps. Nevertheless, she was clearly very discomforted by Hutchison's question. The question was asked with, I thought, malice aforethought — a trademark of Hutchison. With only the barren intellect of Gary Lyon to distract from him, and with neither Wilson or Grant Thomas particularly floating my boat, I won't be tuning in to Footy Confrontational again.

The second incident is a report in The Age of an interview of Ben Cousins*. In the report, Caroline Wilson suggests Cousins was unhappy about the line of questioning from Luke Darcy during a TV interview. Darcy has seemed like a very personable chap with some interesting, if not revolutionary, perspectives on the game. There has been a change in him however, as he has moved into interviewing. One suspects he is either being advised by someone or having questions provided to him. The net effect has been the emergence of another confrontational interviewer.

There are places, times and issues requiring confrontational interviewing, in my view. In neither of these incidents was a confrontational style warranted. Call me old-fashioned, but I regard that as bad manners.

* I did say earlier that I wouldn't mention Ben again until he played. He's playing tonight, so I'm anticipating by about 7 hours! :-) Best of luck, Ben.

Update: The Cousins interview screened at half-time of the game was pretty timid — none of the agro bits made it past the edit suite, it seems — with plenty of opportunity for Cousins to show his positive attitude, and mixture of humility, confidence and reality. Pity his teammates have made such a dismal start to the season.

How good to see 2 double-page spreads of Aussie Rules in The Age's sports section this morning! Only the Border Medal and Andrew Symonds latest brain-fade kept Aussie Rules from the front page.

Of course, with nearly two months to go before the real stuff starts, every side is talking up their chances and every supporter is optimistic. I bet the Maggies are glad to avoid a home crowd this weekend with 43ºC forecast for Saturday.

Let's GO, Bombers!!!