The Real James Hird Story -- My Version Of How Essendon's Supplements Scandal Played Out

'How the fuck did it all go so wrong?'

It seems to fans of AFL club Essendon like myself, the ongoing devastatingly destructive drama engulfing the godforsaken club is never gonna end.

Now Essendon coach James Hird has resigned after a turbulent coaching career marred by the ongoing "supplements scandal" over the "pharmacologically experimental" program of injections of various substances overseen by "cowboy" biochemist Stephen Dank that Essendon players were put through in 2012.

With WADA still appealing a ruling that had cleared Essendon players of wrongdoing earlier this year, and Essendon's on-field results making Tony Abbott's poll results look positive, it was probably inevitable Hird -- who has spent at least as much time in court as in the coaching box -- would have to go.

But so much of the real story of what the hell went on at the club has remained a mystery -- especially, from my point of view, how my name has been kept out of the media for so long?

I mean, what have all the investigative journalists been doing? How the hell did Caroline Wilson win that fucking Walkley?

Well.. I can exclusively reveal (take that Caro) that my name may not remain out of the story for much longer. A friendly "source" has leaked me the following transcript of a secret hidden camera recording that has emerged as part of WADA's evidence against the club.

Dating from January 2012, it throws light on the moment Hird began to serious consider the supplements program Dank had to offer, and, sure enough, it is the first decisive evidence that one "Carlo Sands" had a hand in the affair.

Now, 2011-12 was around the time of one of my infamous pear cider binges. So while I always figured I must have had something to do with this debacle, my memory was pretty vague.

Pear cider, as I know too well, is the Devil's own drink, and the only thing I can say in my defence for what the below transcript reveals is that Stephen Dank seemed to make a lot of sense at the time. But then your perceptions are pretty fucked when you're "on the pear".

I publish the transcript below so that all Essendon fans and fans of the game can know what truly happened -- and also because I like to highlight my key role in important events.

***

Many have wondered who introduced a character as dodgy as Stephen Dank to Essendon.

TRANSCRIPT

 [January 2012. James Hird in his office at Windy Hill, Carlo Sands bursts through the door with a dodgy looking bloke in a trench coat in tow.]

CARLO: Jimmy! [slaps Hird on the shoulder] Howyagoing? I got a great plan you're gonna wanna hear!

HIRD: [weary] What is it, Carlo? I am a bit busy right now, we're about to really get stuck into preseason...

CARLO: That's just it! I know just how to whip the boys into shape! And christ they need it, have you seen them? It's like they've consumed nothing but pints of Guinness over the entire off season!

HIRD: That's coz you put them on a Guinness-only diet! I can't believe you talked me in to appointing you Chief Off-Season Fitness and Well-Being Advisor, I never should have gone out with you for "just a couple" of pear ciders.

CARLO: Alright, let's not get into a slanging match over who did or did not get the squad totally smashed every day for four straight months, the point is I know how to turn this around, and quick! This is my mate Steve [points to dodgy trench coat bloke] Say hi to Jim.

DANK: [cackles loudly]

CARLO: Stevie's got this great program sure to bulk the players up. You know he worked with Cronulla in the NRL? Have you seen those lads? Christ, imagine Jobe bursting through a pack with a neck the size of Paul Gallen's!

HIRD: [sniffs] Have you been drinking?

CARLO: What? Maybe a couple, that's not the point! This is the answer to our problems! Basically, he's got these magic needles and you just inject them repeatedly into the boys and wow hey presto they're totally bulked up and shit!

HIRD: I don't know... it sounds a bit dodgy. Is it actually legal?

CARLO: Of course it is! Steve, tell Jim here about the legal situation.

DANK: [cackles loudly]

HIRD: Yeah... look Carlo, I appreciate you're trying to help, but...

CARLO: [leans over] He's also got some magic needle stuff that'll sort out your tan.

HIRD: What?

CARLO: Totally sort your tan. And totally natural looking, too.

HIRD: [trying to appear uninterested] This really all sounds very questionable...

CARLO: Oh come on James! There's no point hiding it! You're obsessed with your tan!

HIRD: I am not!

CARLO: Everyone talks about it! "There goes James Hird," they say, "a true champion of the modern game with five club best and fairests, two premierships and a Norm Smith and Brownlow medal under his belt... if only he didn't look so fucking pasty!"

HIRD: You swear this will work?

CARLO: Tell him Dank.

DANK: [cackles loudly.]

HIRD: Well...

CARLO: Then it's settled! Steve, bring your semi-trailer with the supplements around...we're in business!

DANK: [cackles loudly]



***

Yeah it is all coming back to me now reading that. Not one of my brightest ideas, I will concede. Sorry about that. Here is a song about the dangers of going out and drinking too much pear cider (may not mention pear cider specifically but all "pear heads" will get it).




'Light flashes and my mind goes numb. My head beats like a drum ...' Swedish bluesey pop singer Miss Li nails the essence of a sustained pear cider binge.

Who is Carlo Sands? 25 things you never knew about the man behind the pint

There so many myths out there about the life of Carlo Sands.

His shady past, personal habits, love affairs, these things are speculated wildly about in the tabloids, online chat forums and scientific journals all over the world. Is he Rasputin's love child? Did he really go on a 25-year-long pear cider binge? And, is it true he has dumped Johnny Depp for Lily Allen?

The time has come to separate out fact from fiction. Based on one of those horrible Facebook "list" things that people insist on infecting their friends with, here are "25 things you never knew about the man behind the pint".

Tell your friends.

* * *

1. Carlo Sands is an alcoholic.

2. Carlo Sands likes to refer to himself in the third person. It makes him feel important.

3. Carlo Sands is not on speaking terms with his liver. He suspects the "generation gap" is to blame. His liver will enjoy its 90th birthday next weekend.

4. Carlo Sands was given two phone numbers for AA from a friend just the other day. He appreciates thought, but cannot attend the meetings as, worst luck, they clash with happy hour.

5. Carlo Sands does not have a drinking problem, 'cept when he can't get a drink.

6. He also likes to steal lyrics from Tom Waits and pass them off as his own original thoughts.

7. Carlo Sands believes strongly that work is the curse of the drinking class.

8. He also likes to take epigrams uttered by Oscar Wilde, and claim them as his own.

9. Carlo Sands beer consumption is such that he is the stimulus package. Kevin called him personally to discuss a bail-out of his budget to stave off the total meltdown of the Australian economy. In fact once, when he briefly threatened to stop drinking, the head of the Reserve Bank, the treasury department and a representative of the Chamber of Commerce staged an intervention to convince him the nation needed him at the pub.

10. Carlo Sands goes on regular health kicks, during which he goes out of his way to kick his health as hard as possible.

11. Carlo Sands' idea of looking after his health is to only smoke other people's cigarettes.

12. Carlo Sands' idea of looking after his finances is to only smoke other people's cigarettes.

13. Other people get pissed off when Carlo Sands smokes all their cigarettes.

14. Carlo Sands joined the Facebook group "Who is Carlo Sands?", even though he knows the answer.

15. Carlo Sands was once the subject of intense debate on a North American-based left-wing e-list. This is the highlight of his otherwise quite uneventful life, with the exception of his key role during the French Revolution.

16. Carlo Sands misses the guillotine. He thinks that, in the absence of the guillotine, it is hard to go past the garrotte.

17. Carlo Sands has been informed he is being seriously considered for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

18. Carlo Sands has his own personal arch enemy, whom he believes to be the "anti-Carlo". His name is Ben Warren, he lives in Canberra and Carlo knows where he works. He runs a blog called "Get fit with Ben!".

19. Carlo Sands has currently two duels to the death on his agenda. The first of these is with a cad who chose aging as his weapon. Carlo looks forward to attending the cad's funeral but worries whether it will be bad taste to wear a triumphant grin. He has a second duel to be carried out after the first has been completed.*

20. Carlo Sands likes duels.

21. Carlo Sands supports the Essendon Football Club, the Mighty Bombers. He finds the question posed by TISM in "Whatareya", of "Who is your favourite genius, James Hird or James Joyce?" strange. It is obviously James Hird.

22. Carlo Sands thinks that Lily Allen was easily "Person of 2008" for her very public champagne swilling drunkeness while hosting an awards ceremony and for telling Elton John to "fuck off" when he made a snide remark about it on stage with her. Unlike Lily, that man has no class.

22. Carlo Sands is engaged to be married to Lily Allen. However, this is top secret. And everyone knows that Lily Allen is good at keeping engagements secret. This is so that Johnny Depp, with whom Carlo Sands has had a complicated, off-and on again long-term relationship with, does not find out.

24. Carlo Sands is plotting to kill you all.

25. Carlo Sands' lawyer has advised him to make no further comment at this time.


* * *

POSTSCRIPT

* It is with a heavy heart I must inform my loyal readers that, since the above quiz was completed, calamity has struck!

YES! Due to an unforeseen circumstance and, frankly (though I do not wish to appear a bad sport), SHOCKING bad luck, I regret to inform my multitude of fans that Carlo Sands lost the duel referred to in this post.

Also, I am dead.

I mean, that should be obvious, logically, as I had already explained it was a duel to the death, but sometimes you need to spell these things out to avoid misunderstandings.

I shall attempt as best I can to explain how this catastrophe occurred. And I assume it will shock few if I point out that, at bottom, this is all Facebook's fault.

Yes, among it's many crimes, including selling users' private information to corporations and censoring supporters of Palestine, Facebook is pretty much responsible for killing Carlo Sands.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

The facts are these. As I was the challenger in the duel, the challengee -- a cad whose murderous name is not even worth mentioning on such a civilised blog -- reserved the right to choose the weapon.

As I explained, the cad chose aging -- claiming he had seen the state of my liver and it was only a matter of time.

But it was not liver failure that did me in. It was a Facebook quiz.

Foolishly, without a thought to the consequences, I took the quiz "When will you die?"

And I received the answer: October 21, 2008.

I took the quiz sometime in 2009 and, as we all know Facebook never lies, the cad promptly declared a victory I had no legal, technical nor moral grounds to deny.

It is always disturbing to discover you have dead for many months. It is much worse when it involves losing a duel to the death to a cad.

I won't deny it was a shock, but I am coping as best I can. Still, if you wish to assist with my grief, you can donate consoling booze via the paypal donate button near the top of the right hand column.