Wednesday 05 October 2022

Thank goodness for the AFL, just when things are looking grim for your blogger looking for a topic for today's blog the good ol AFL comes through, it really is the gift that keeps on giving and giving.

Today's subject of interest is the Essendon Football Club (EFC) also known as the Bombers.  

The EFC has had a pretty tough run over the last few years going back to the drug scandal of 2012 when many of their players were injected with doubtful and banned supplements.  At the time club hero and legend James Hird was the senior coach of the team.

The tough times have continued and EFC finished 15th out of 18 teams for the year 2022, with 7 wins and 15 losses.  This pretty ordinary year led to many questions being asked of the administration and coaching staff of the club.  Due to the seasonus horriblus the EFC decided that they would have to replace their coach.  Their search for a new coach was done openly and publicly with some high profile folk in the coaching world being approached, however unfortunately, the existing coach was still coaching and hadn't actually been sacked whilst the search for the new coach was taking place.

So this caused a bit of a ruckus and I think that the CEO at the time resigned over this little schemozzle.

So this meant that as well as looking for a new coach the EFC was looking for a new CEO.  After an extensive (and possibly expensive) and diligent search a candidate was selected and offered the position of CEO of the EFC.  Said candidate, Andrew Thorburn (AT), accepted the CEO position and started his employment with said club last Monday.

Now this is where the real fun starts. It turns out that AT is also a senior member of a conservative Christian church known as City on a Hill (CoaH).  It also turns out that CoaH has a strong stand against things like abortion, homosexuality and possibly gay marriage and openly preaches against these issues, and we all know where the politically correct AFL stands on these matters.

So, on Monday after AT starts at the EFC somebody somewhere begins to leak this information to the media.  Well, that set the baying hounds of the woke community into action.  Lots of people got into the action, naturally all the LGBTQ+ activist groups, the various vocal media personalities and even the premier all condemned AT for his religious affiliation and the EFC for employing him.  By the end of the day AT realised that this situation was untenable and rather than give up his religion he resigned, after one day in the job. 

Some people have been critical of the EFC and said that things shouldn't have got this far and that AT shouldn't have got the job because he belonged to this church.  So much for freedom of religion.

It is illegal in this state to discriminate on the basis of religion, amongst other things, you can't even ask somebody questions about their religion in a job interview let alone make a decision based on the applicant's religion.

So in this day and age a person has been made to remove himself from a senior executive position due to his religion.  Sounds like something out of the middle ages or at least 1950.

Most of the mainstream Christian religions, Muslims and Orthodox Jews and possibly other religions hold similar views to CoaH.  Could you imagine the outcry if a Muslim had to give up their job because of their religion.  What about a Roman Catholic, we all know the Catholic church's position on abortion,and homosexuality and gay marriage.

The funny thing is that the premier was one of the strongest critics of this man and his religion and the premier himself is a god fearing, church going Roman Catholic.  Does the term hypocrisy spring to mind?  How does the premier reconcile his over the top criticism of AT and his religion with his own religion that holds similar views.

On a slightly different note but still involving the EFC, can you guess who one of the applicants for the coaching job was?  None other than the aforementioned club hero and legend, James Hird.  Yes, the same James Hird who was in charge as senior coach when the club went down the slippery slope of the supplements injecting regime. A bit cheeky applying for his old job back I think, but he didn't get it anyway. 

And, by the way, I wouldn't have offered AT the job given his performance as CEO of the NAB and the criticism of him by the banking royal commission.  But that is a different story.

No covid figures today.  I have had a look at them and everything is still tracking in the right direction.  People are still getting covid and people are still dying but less and less each week.