ESSENDON members will help decide coach James Hird’s future if Bombers players are found guilty of doping, chairman Paul Little says.
With the long-running supplements scandal drawing to an end, Little said the members would have a say on the fate of the club’s leadership if the players lost their case.
“I think myself, along with the board and those other key components, and coaching maybe one of those — in fact it would be — I think the membership would need to decide how they wanted the club to move forward,’’ Little told the Herald Sun.
“And some pretty tough decisions would need to be made to be part of that.”
Thirty-four past and present Essendon players were served infraction notices by the AFL earlier this month.
An AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal session has since been set for December 15 to hear the case against those players accused of taking banned peptide Thymosin beta-4 in 2012.
If the players win their case Little said the Bombers would continue to reinvigorate the club, which he said has put in place “world’s best practice in terms of governance”.
But he admitted many issues would need to be addressed urgently if they lost, such as the composition of the board and playing group.
“The board would need to propose a way forward and let the membership determine if they will be given the right to do that or not,” Little said.
“It’s too big a decision for the board to be making in its own right. It’s not because it’s too hard, but because it’s the right thing to do.”
Little said the severity of any penalties handed to players could impact the futures of Essendon’s leadership.
“I am a realist,” he said. “If we lost it and at the extreme there were multiple suspensions handed out for significant time, that would be a lot more difficult to manage than some sort of backdated arrangement that effectively meant no lost time.
“However ... a conviction is a conviction.’’
Little reportedly would not be drawn when asked if Hird could continue to coach if the players were found guilty.
However, if the players won their case, he said Essendon would allow Hird, who he admitted has been gagged by the club, to speak out in an interview.
“You couldn’t have everyone giving their views on what did and didn’t happen when we were in an environment where we didn’t know what happened and we didn’t know where it was going to end,” Little said.
“We were trying to control the messaging and one of the downsides of that is James hasn’t had the chance to re-engage.”
Little also denied the club tried to sack Hird last month after he went against Essendon’s wishes and appealed the Federal Court’s ruling that ASADA’s investigation into the supplements regime was lawful.
“Had we wanted to sack James, we would’ve,” Little said.
“If we did, we would’ve had a raft of legal actions and disgruntled supporters. His legal rights were there and we honoured those.”
