The answer was no.
We found this out the hard way in the second term in front of 90,000 at the MCG when the Blues put the foot down, kicking six goals to one to lead by 41 points at halftime. After that we simply didn’t have anything left in the tank to mount a heroic comeback, and ultimately Hirdy’s first season in charge ended with a 62-point elimination final loss.
While the finish wasn’t ideal, he’d made a smooth transition into coaching and seemed a natural for the caper. The bottom line was that our young team just wasn’t mature enough to handle the physical and defensive style the coaching panel wanted us to play. That would come.
Moreover, the club pulled an ace out of the pack at the start of the next pre-season, when it lured to Windy Hill the man who’d run the fitness program that had kick-started Geelong’s recent premiership run.
His name was Dean Robinson.
JAMES HIRD
Premiership captain, Brownlow Medallist, long-time teammate and coach
It’s not about the limelight with Fletch, he just loves the game. He loves the fans, the dyed-in-the-wool supporters, the true believers. He loves the people around the club and gives them a lot of time and he also puts a lot of time into the community.
But fame? Celebrity? He’s not interested in that other side of it at all. It’s just not who he is and the thing about Fletch is he’s never pretended to be someone he’s not. I think that’s terrific.
It was only really when I began coaching Dustin that I truly noticed and appreciated how much opposition teams respected him and how much effort they put into neutralising his effect on the game, consistently taking him up the ground in an attempt to expose his endurance.
It’s a reminder that a lot of attack starts from defence. That’s why Fletch is feared and respected.
Dustin and I had some interesting conversations in 2012 and 2013, about whether he wanted to play on. I told him straight up: ‘I’m not sure you play all 22 games but I think you can certainly play.’ His response was: ‘I don’t have to do the 22, but I want to keep playing as long as I can.’
My view when I was coaching was that when Fletch was in the team, I felt much more comfortable. I knew we were going to be a much better back line with him in the team than without him. Not only did I know he would make the right decision at the right time, but he’d help other players too.
He was always the first picked in the back line for me and probably still will be . . . I hope.
CHAPTER 15
WEAPONISED
‘I won’t say anything. I’ll give you a week and let me know what you think.’These were the words of my good friend Dean Solomon, who’d spent the previous year working alongside Dean Robinson – or ‘The Weapon’ as he preferred to be called – at Gold Coast. Robinson had left Geelong after 2010 and joined Cats superstar Gary Ablett junior on the Gold Coast for the Suns’ inaugural season in the AFL.
When he wasn’t laughing, ‘Solly’ did mention that some of the gym work I was about to be introduced to was, in his words, ‘pretty full-on’.
I’d had an extended break at the end of the season – one of the benefits of being in the veteran class. Normally I didn’t take the extra time, but I had freshened up on the break and was feeling good when I walked into to my first meeting with the Weapon.
He was actually quite an intimidating figure. He clearly lived what he preached and was a solidly built character who I found out later had been a professional rodeo rider. He’d spent two years with NRL team the Manly Sea Eagles before entering the AFL.
We weren’t training at Windy Hill because of cricket commitments there, and instead were doing most of our work at Collingwood’s old home ground of Victoria Park.
My first session back was a speed session at a small athletics track in Collingwood. It was still one of my strengths so I felt comfortable with it, but the volume the Weapon threw at us was something I hadn’t experienced before. And it was nothing compared to what he had planned in the weights room.
I wasn’t big on leg weights because my stick legs had got me this far and I figured they didn’t need any building up – but the Weapon was on a mission. He had a directive to make the entire Essendon list bigger and to do so in a hurry. Both Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson and Brendan ‘Macca’ McCartney had stressed we needed bigger bodies, similar to what Geelong had around the contest, in order to be successful. There were days that followed when, after our weight sessions, blokes would be just leaning against their lockers, too exhausted to even get in their cars to go home. It was certainly eye-opening for me. For example, where we used to do 3 by 6 squats, the Weapon would have us doing 10 by 10. There were also some crazy numbers getting thrown around with what the players were lifting in the gym.
After just a couple of weeks the boys started what became known as the ‘Weaponised List’. There was a whiteboard above the hot and cold tubs that we did as part of recovery, and you had to tick off your name on it once you’d jumped in and out of the tubs. A column was added up the top with the heading ‘Weaponised’, and if you had been broken by the fitness coach in a session then your name went up there. It got to the stage where blokes would just walk straight up and put their name on it. They weren’t injured or anything, just sore and shot-up from the intensity and volume of the work-outs.
The Weapon thrived on this and loved it when the media pumped him as ‘Superman’. Emails from him didn’t have ‘Dean Robinson’ at the top – they were from ‘The Weapon’.
He and I clashed a few times as I felt I knew what was right for my body and didn’t need someone coming in and messing with the formula that had got me through 19 seasons of AFL football. ‘I don’t know if I need to do so much stuff, Dean,’ was my standard line to him. He disagreed and continued to ride me – I think he wanted the other players to see that everyone had bought his approach and was on the same program. I continued to resist, and it hurt. There were times when I was lifting weight quantities I’d never done before and nearly blacking out. The old back was starting to play up, too, which wasn’t surprising given that next to me, super-fit 25-year-old guys were starting to knock up as well. Every time I spoke to Solly about it, he would just laugh.
While the weights were the biggest shock, the level of running at training also went up several notches and everything was recorded. The fitness staff tracked how quickly and how far each player ran in a session and it was all done with GPS devices and heart-rate monitors.
One of those responsible for recording the data was the Weapon’s main sidekick, who had come out of the NRL and had just joined Essendon. His name was Stephen Dank.
*
I’d always be the first to training at Victoria Park because I’d drop the kids off at school and then keep going. If training was starting at 10 am or 11 am, I’d be there just after 9 am. Often I’d sit in the car with a coffee and read the newspaper; on other occasions I’d wander out and have a chat to some of the staff. Dank would also be there early, setting up the GPS stuff, and I figured it was his domain as he had the computer there recording all the data.
I’d never worn a GPS device before. The joke among my teammates and the coaching staff was that they’d throw me one and I’d just throw it straight back because I knew it was the Weapon’s way of catching me out in terms of the kilometres I covered at training compared to my younger teammates.
Most mornings I’d sit down with Dank and we’d chat. I enjoyed watching the rugby, so often we’d talk about what was happening in the NRL. Stephen was a different sort of character but was clearly smart. My first thoughts were that he had a good head on his shoulders. Truth be known, I actually quite enjoyed Stephen Dank’s company.
I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t long before Dank moved up the pecking order at Essendon. One week he suddenly had an office at Windy Hill and seemed to be on board in a full-time capacity.
There was one other significant change he introduced around this time: the GPS devices were gone and supplements were in.
I’d taken supplements throughout my career but not by injection, which was what Dank introduced. The only injections I’d been given previously at the club were flu shots. It was standard practice that at the start of each year you would sit down with the club’s nutritionist and figure out what supplements you needed. Often I would take them for a few weeks but if they weren’t doing anything for me, I’d stop using them. I’d usually neglect to tell the nutritionist this news, just to keep her off my back.
The program Dank put us on at the start had supplements that were similar to what we’d been using in recent years, but I noticed there were a couple of different ones in the mix. When I parked myself in Dank’s office of a morning I would ask him questions about the stuff we were taking. I’d even flick through the books he had on the supplements. For every one of my questions he had an answer, and his answers always seemed to add up. He said everyone was on a different program but mine was focused more on the recovery side of things and keeping the body strong on a weekly basis. That seemed to make sense.
The first alarm bell rang when the frequency of the injections started to increase. I’d had the odd injection in the stomach over the years but this was going to another level. I was still taking the tablets, which I’d read about and signed off on as they were ASADA and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) approved. But the injections – which were given either in the stomach or the buttocks – were getting more and more frequent. Over the course of the season I would have between 30 and 50 needles.
That sounds excessive now, but at the time we all thought it was just part of a program that had been ticked off by the various authorities, including the club’s medical staff. And every time we asked a question about what we were taking, we were assured it was not only beneficial but legal.
From there it just became routine.
We’d been convinced that the supplements program was above board, we’d been shown documents which suggested it was and told that it was going to give us that extra couple of per cent advantage over our competitors. Whether that was in the gym or in our recovery or ability to run harder for longer, it varied from player to player but the bottom line was we would be a better football team because of all these needles. As players, that’s often all you need.
Was it naive? Trust is a big thing in football clubs. You need it between players to be successful on the field, and behind the scenes there is trust that everything the coaches and staff are doing is for your benefit and the ultimate goal of success. It wasn’t unreasonable for us to think this was what was in play here.
However, Dank’s recording procedures became more haphazard as the season progressed. On several occasions I’d get injected by Dank in his office in the morning and then go and train or do my weights sessions but Dank would seemingly forget to tick it off, and then in the afternoon he’d be chasing me up for another injection. I don’t think he was trying to do the wrong thing by giving me a double dose, but I did find it odd. Again, at the time I shrugged it off and put it down to him having 40 blokes to organise – even though I was developing strong suspicions he was not properly on top of the recording process.
Dank also introduced an intravenous set-up in what I assumed was a doctor’s surgery – it was actually an anti-ageing clinic – across the road from Windy Hill. This was sold to the players as a crucial process in our recovery from training – those same exercises, drills and processes that had been ramped up yet again by the Weapon.
Walking across the road to be put on IV drips didn’t seem odd at the time. There were always nurses there so it all seemed legit. For most of us in the playing squad it was another acknowledgement that we were training hard, so we simply accepted it when they told us it was the quickest and best way of putting the vitamins and nutrients back into the body that we were losing during the tough sessions. Brisbane had apparently used the system with great success during their premiership run a decade earlier.
Even so, at the start of the new program our leadership group had asked for a form, which each player would sign, listing all the peptides and amino acids that were being used and confirming they were all WADA and ASADA compliant. There was also a confidentiality clause, which was more about ensuring other clubs didn’t get on to what we were doing; apparently it was at the ‘cutting edge’.
As a playing group we put our trust in Dank and the Weapon. On face value we had no reason not to. They had the backing of James Hird, the coach, and we presumed that Bruce Reid, the club doctor, and his medical staff were also on board.
How wrong we were.
*
It didn’t take long for the results to come.
Four straight wins to start the season had everyone feeling good about the radical summer we’d had. The biggest test of the new magical powers of the Weapon–Dank regime came after the Round 4 win over Carlton. When we walked off the MCG at 4.30 pm on that Saturday afternoon, we had to be back there again on the following Wednesday to play Collingwood in the Anzac Day clash.
A four-day turnaround was crazy. Immediately after the Carlton game we went to a hyperbaric chamber facility in Toorak to do our recovery. There were other special machines – one was like a vacuum – that massaged our legs to the extreme. We also all had injections there, which was the first time I’d had them away from the club, but given the urgency of the situation in regards to recovery, it seemed to make sense.
And it seemed to work.
Once again Anzac Day provided a classic contest.
There was no issue with running out of legs – quite the opposite as we turned in a thrilling final quarter. We’d been behind all day and early in the last term the margin was out to 18 points before our little goalsneak, Alwyn Davey, got busy and kicked two in a row. When midfielder Brent Stanton snapped a goal over his head we were suddenly in front with two minutes remaining. But then Collingwood surged again in the final minute and unfortunately we broke one of the golden rules of playing in the wet: never let the ball get over the back of the pack. I’d followed my man out to the forward pocket so I could only watch helplessly as the long bomb to the top of the goal square spilled to the back and into the path of Magpie rover Jarryd Blair. He just got his toe to the ball – they called for a video review, which was new technology available to the umpires – from a metre out. It confirmed the worst and sealed Collingwood’s one-point victory.
This proved to be only a minor blip on our radar as we won our next four games and after nine rounds were sitting second on the ladder on the same number of points as West Coast. At the other end of the scale Melbourne, under new coach Mark Neeld, were yet to win a game, so the Saturday night Round 10 fixture at the MCG wasn’t supposed to give us any problems.
We clearly went in with that mindset and struggled in the first half, kicking 2.9. At three-quarter time our lead was eight points but we’d stupidly left the door open in the final term and once the Demons got a sniff they turned into a completely different outfit. Our easy night at the office turned into an embarrassing six-point loss.
It clearly lingered, because the following week against Sydney at Docklands Stadium in the battle for top spot we were just as bad. After kicking a goal early in the game, we didn’t get another until midway through the third term and at three-quarter time the score read Sydney 11.8 (74) to Essendon 2.15 (27).
Hirdy understandably gave us a good spray during the final break and it certainly touched a nerve, because something clicked. The goals started coming, and fast. When Leroy Jetta kicked one off the ground there were five minutes left and the margin was back to just four points. Jetta’s cousin, Lewis, who was Sydney’s key line-breaker, hit back straight away for the Swans before our captain, Jobe Watson, marked and goaled with just under two minutes remaining.
We were on the verge of one of the greatest comebacks in history, and when Courtenay Dempsey marked 55 metres out we were in the box seat. But just as he went to play on, the siren sounded. If it had been a second earlier he would have been able to go back and
have a shot to win the game. Unfortunately he had clearly gone over his mark, so the umpire’s call was right.
After an 84-point flogging of the Western Bulldogs in Round 14 we were sitting fourth and rightfully being talked about as a legitimate premiership contender. But we only won one more game for the year. Hamstrung is what we became, with a soft-tissue epidemic sweeping through Windy Hill. The turnaround was extraordinary and we didn’t just hit a wall – we slammed into the Great Wall of China.
What was happening in the second half of games was almost embarrassing. We had no legs and were getting run down with ease each week by teams that earlier in the season we’d walked over. The injuries kept piling up: almost on a daily basis someone would go down. By the end of the season the number of players sidelined because of muscle strains was past 20; more than half the list had broken down. I wasn’t immune, missing the final two games of the season with a hamstring strain.
After being 8–1 after Round 9, we finished the season 11–11 and in 11th position on the ladder. Hirdy called for an investigation to find out what happened, but we all knew the answer. All fingers were pointed squarely at the Weapon and his sidekick, Dank. They’d tried to build a side in one year instead of over three or four years, with their ‘cutting edge’ supplement program and extreme training loads pushing all of our bodies to breaking point.
It was bad. But unfortunately it was only the tip of the iceberg.
MARK McVEIGH
Long-time teammate, played 232 games over 14 seasons
What a legend he is. As a player, he’s a freak. And as a man, well he’s one of the best blokes you could ever meet. He’s so humble in everything he does. No wonder everyone loves him so much.
Fletch Page 16