So the AFL acknowledge that the Hawthorn players and families suffered "hurt, pain and anguish" but are committed to doing bugger all to bring the people who caused it to account?
You don't acknowledge "hurt, pain and anguish" if you don't believe the allegations hold some truth.
And that makes the fact that Clarkson & Co won't ever face any consequences particularly distasteful.
I do understand that it was next to impossible for the AFL investigation to achieve anything when you have both the complainants and the accused refusing to cooperate, and hasn't that worked out perfectly for them! They get to walk away from the issue, claiming everyone is happy with the outcome.
Well, I imagine the complainants just want to move on at this point, and Clarkson & Co will be busy spinning it so they'll come out looking like innocent men cleared of dastardly false allegations.
But as a fan, I'm not happy. The game is a lot grubbier to me now. The AFL talks the talk with indigenous rounds and talk of unity and making a stand against racism in the stadiums... but when called upon to do something difficult and brave that will hurt the game in the short term but make it stronger in the long term, they wilted. They dodged.
There's no way multiple players and their families all get together to make up stories that they then sit on, waiting for the unlikely event that their club will come asking questions one day, and then hope it gets leaked to the press... that's not how conspiracies work. Everything about how they shared stories suggests truth behind it. The AFL knows it – "hurt, pain and anguish" doesn't come out of nothing.
But the men who are responsible for it all won't face the music.
To me this is more disappointing than the AFL's cover-ups of the West Coast drug culture (and given my feelings about WC, that's saying something).
