- Banned
- #1
The Great Beat-Up: The Drug Problem at West Coast
This whole issue of drugs in AFL, and of West Coast supposedly being the worst offenders, is a total beat-up.
Rumour and innuendo are no substitute for real evidence, but that hasn't stopped commentators from inflating this issue at every opportunity.
The Footy Show interview with West Coast chairman Dalton Gooding was presented as some kind of massive expose - maybe I missed it, but was anything actually revealed?
Gooding basically admitted their had been some discipline problems at the club, before saying the club wouldn't tolerate any more stuff-ups and that illicit drugs were unacceptable. What was the big revelation here? What else was he going to say? You'd get the same line on drugs and discipline from every chairman in the league.
This whole saga is marked as a beat-up by the complete lack of real information. I'm yet to see a shred of evidence that there is a "drug problem" in the AFL, or at West Coast or any other club.
Notice the way Hutchison kept referring to "a perception back East" that West Coast had a drug problem. That perception was emphasised because Hutchison had no actual evidence to use as a starting point for his questions. A perception - that's what's driving this beat-up.
I love the way commentators use "anecdotal evidence" to build their case. What does that phrase mean in this context? Rumour? Hearsay? In most reporting, that would not be sufficient to drive a story - but in this issue, that's considered a smoking gun.
Craig Hutchison spuriously linked Cousins getting locked up and Kerr assaulting a taxi driver with a supposed drug problem at West Coast. How does that work? Were drugs a factor in either incident?
Then there's the Fletcher incident. If anyone knows what happened in Las Vegas, then let's hear it. It's unsound to just assume it was a drug overdose in the absence of any real information?
Like I said - show me the evidence. Don't just recite unsubstantiated rumours or point to incidents that had nothing to do with drugs.
Quite frankly, I couldn't care less what Ben Cousins or any other player does or doesn't ingest in a nightclub. I have no interested whatsoever in this half-baked soap opera that surrounds players' off-field activities. The public appetite for this stuff mystifies me.
I thought most people follow football because they like the spectacle and the contest. Players will be judged on what they do on-field - and rightly so. Why is there such interest in everything else?
That said, the way this story about the "drug problem" has been manufactured needs to be pointed out.
People should demand some facts instead of just lapping up innuendo that feeds their dislike of the Eagles.
This whole issue of drugs in AFL, and of West Coast supposedly being the worst offenders, is a total beat-up.
Rumour and innuendo are no substitute for real evidence, but that hasn't stopped commentators from inflating this issue at every opportunity.
The Footy Show interview with West Coast chairman Dalton Gooding was presented as some kind of massive expose - maybe I missed it, but was anything actually revealed?
Gooding basically admitted their had been some discipline problems at the club, before saying the club wouldn't tolerate any more stuff-ups and that illicit drugs were unacceptable. What was the big revelation here? What else was he going to say? You'd get the same line on drugs and discipline from every chairman in the league.
This whole saga is marked as a beat-up by the complete lack of real information. I'm yet to see a shred of evidence that there is a "drug problem" in the AFL, or at West Coast or any other club.
Notice the way Hutchison kept referring to "a perception back East" that West Coast had a drug problem. That perception was emphasised because Hutchison had no actual evidence to use as a starting point for his questions. A perception - that's what's driving this beat-up.
I love the way commentators use "anecdotal evidence" to build their case. What does that phrase mean in this context? Rumour? Hearsay? In most reporting, that would not be sufficient to drive a story - but in this issue, that's considered a smoking gun.
Craig Hutchison spuriously linked Cousins getting locked up and Kerr assaulting a taxi driver with a supposed drug problem at West Coast. How does that work? Were drugs a factor in either incident?
Then there's the Fletcher incident. If anyone knows what happened in Las Vegas, then let's hear it. It's unsound to just assume it was a drug overdose in the absence of any real information?
Like I said - show me the evidence. Don't just recite unsubstantiated rumours or point to incidents that had nothing to do with drugs.
Quite frankly, I couldn't care less what Ben Cousins or any other player does or doesn't ingest in a nightclub. I have no interested whatsoever in this half-baked soap opera that surrounds players' off-field activities. The public appetite for this stuff mystifies me.
I thought most people follow football because they like the spectacle and the contest. Players will be judged on what they do on-field - and rightly so. Why is there such interest in everything else?
That said, the way this story about the "drug problem" has been manufactured needs to be pointed out.
People should demand some facts instead of just lapping up innuendo that feeds their dislike of the Eagles.
