The thing about Essendon and the never-ending supplement saga…

I’m an Essendon supporter but by no means a die-hard. Admittedly by interest in football has really declined over the past decade, and my interest in the team even less so the past few years with the never-ending supplement saga that has been pervading the news continually. Yesterday, WADA has come out and finally found the team guilty of using banned substances as part of the clubs supplement program and as a result, 34 past and present players have been banned.

The thing that really annoys me about this is the emphasis that’s put onto players for being mindful of what goes into their bodies. Sure, that’s easy enough to say, and is really relevant when you have individuals taking a little something on the side to be unfairly competitive – the genuine cheats. But think about these guys for a minute.

Picture yourself as part of a professional football club, involved in the vigorous training regimes – your entire life is consumed by the game and being prepared for it. If the club has provided to you a vitamin supplement cocktail and everyone else you know in the team is using them – would you really doubt it? Why wouldn’t you think the club itself ensures that what is being provided is above board and legal?

Now I of course have not been in this position, but when I think back to my school football days, had the coach suggested and provided a series of vitamins or what not, I very possibly would have taken them (albeit naively).

Of course the players really should be asking – hey, what’s in this? But at the same time, it’s perfectly understandable why many/most haven’t. They shouldn’t have too! If you can’t trust your professional sports club, particularly in a game that’s supposedly clean like AFL – then who the hell can you trust?

The blame here should be adamantly on the team itself. On the management. The coaching body. The very people who should be ensuring that anything their players are taking that’s determined by them, is clean.

If beyond this a player is taking their own illegal supplements on the side, that’s a different thing entirely. Given what’s happened with this whole, dark scenario – I think it’s the players themselves who are really paying the far greater penalty than their superiors.

Domestic Violence – Australia’s Dirty Little Secret

Domestic violence is a re-occurring, terrible problem in Australia. There’s rarely a week that goes by without hearing about another woman being killed or seriously injured by their current or ex-partners and the inactivity of our government to deal with this issue is frustrating beyond belief.

Australia is often called the ‘lucky’ country, but these days I really wonder what the hell that actually means. Yes we might have beautiful beaches and be gifted with a whole range of other desirables, but I am becoming increasingly jaded by what we as Australian’s consider being lucky – for on a global scale we’re simply dropping the ball.

For a start we have our head in the sand about climate change, and our recent track record with handling asylum seekers is appalling. Our wonderful government beneath the recently deposed Tony Abbott (and good riddance to that clown) feels it’s more important to drop bombs on foreign countries or sink ridiculous amounts of cash into local anti-terrorism controls (such as the beyond stupid Border Farce) and yet women are dying in unacceptable numbers for no other reason than their male partners can’t control their anger.

Men do not have the right to hurt women. It’s that simple. Whether drunk or sober there is never an acceptable time for a man to hit a woman – let alone take her life. This problem has to stop!

Case in point – the other night I left my apartment in a high-rise building to go out for dinner with my wife. As I closed our door, I could hear what sounded like an argument in the flat opposite. I couldn’t make out what was being said although the woman did mention something about having a girl’s night with her friends or what not. I thought nothing more of it.

About an hour and a half later, we arrived home to a police car parked outside our building. Outside the building was a large male – maybe late-30’s or so, sitting by the building in a singlet and jeans. He gave me a guilty looking smile as I passed although I didn’t recognise him. When we got back up to our floor, there was a fist sized hole in the wall between the two elevators. And then another hole further down the corridor, and another smaller one in the wall between our apartment and theirs. We could quite obviously hear the police talking inside.

So there’s obviously been a fight between the two and in his rage this guy has punched 3 separate holes in the wall – the one between the elevators must have bloody hurt too as that wall is quite thick.

What if he had instead hit his partner? The sad thing is – in many cases like this, the guy does infact hit their partner – or in the case of a recent incident in Queensland – the man chased down his partner and continued hitting her until not only she died, but her face was unrecognisable.

How the hell do you do this to someone – let alone someone you have supposedly loved or cared for?

It pisses me off.

Thankfully with the recent change of government, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has sworn to address this issue. Whether you love him or hate him, good on him for finally taking some form of action. The cost of inaction has been appalling.

The day after the incident in my building, a friendly looking print-out was put over the hole between the lift saying, “Please excuse the wet paint!” with a big smiley face beside it (placed there by the building management – not the guy responsible).

I felt like crossing out the ‘wet paint’ and putting in ‘the results of a man who can’t control his temper’ – as this thing shouldn’t be kept secretive and behind closed doors – this guy deserves to be shamed and called for his actions. Too long has this been allowed to fester in the dark.