The Soaring

The AFL instigated report into the conduct of the West Coast Eagles has been handed down by Justice Gillard and it has been made known that no further sanctions will be laid against the club.

In what was a massive build up to the final decision by the AFL, it seemed the longer the process took the less likely the AFL were to imposing a loss of premiership points or draft picks. The scope of the report was to see if the Eagle brought the AFL into disrepute breaking rule 1.6, but only for events following the April 29th 2007, the time the commission called Eagle’s leadership in after the suspension of Ben Cousins.

Commissioner Mike Fitzpatrick was quick to point out that due to the Eagle’s “long rap sheet” they will closely scrutinise any further incidents very closely. I think Mark Barnaba and the Eagle’s board are well aware of that and the new Darren Glass-led outfit will be keen to put their own imprint upon the history of the club.

The real question will be, what does the AFL proposes to do about other clubs’ indiscretions? Now that the Eagles have seemingly been dealt with, is the “inquiry and report” process going to be implemented at other clubs upon a string or even a couple of public misdemeanours?

I am all for a new era at the Eagles. Frankly, the off-field scrutiny did get a bit tiring and a lack of seeing any change for the better was worrisome. Now, we hope the worst is behind us. But, we need to be real. Indiscretion by AFL players will happen. I don’t know that out of this episode that the AFL have any sort of blueprint that would want to follow again. Some will say the AFL was too weak. Others will say the report by Justice Gillard was a waste of money. Still others will want to know why the public didn’t get to see it’s summarised conclusions. Whatever the case, if the AFL sees this as an Eagles-only problem (plenty of evidence of that) that is now dealt with I think they’ll be disappointed.

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