Uber-cool

James Hird is ice.  Against the backdrop of doping allegations, resignations and intense scrutiny, Hird has remained calm and affable.  He has made himself available and is capable under fire.

 Journalists skulk outside his house each morning.  The interruptions must be frustrating but Hird answers questions in a measured tone, rarely getting impatient, always ready to smirk.  He isn’t contemptuous or grumpy.

 

Questions about the doping investigation are thrust at him during every press conference he has given in 2013.  Hird has never lost control.  His body language doesn’t betray his emotions.  He appears to be transparent, despite the limitations of the ongoing investigation.

 

Somewhere, during the press conference, he’ll suggest the questions should move to the game, otherwise he’ll wind things up.

 

There has been no menace or intent.  While coaches like Mick Malthouse, Ross Lyon and Alistair Clarkson would’ve bristled by round one and lost it by round three, Hird has remained stoic.

 

His demeanour is extraordinary, as is his performance.  It has been great theatre.

 

But it is all a front, a bluff.

 

Hird is uber-cool, like Steve McQueen in The Getaway.   People wanted McQueen’s character, Doc McCoy, to get away with murder and robbery.  Ultimately, McCoy does.

 

A lot of influential people want Hird to get away without charge from Essendon’s supplement program.  Hird is confident he will, when the truth, as he keeps saying, comes out.

 

Hird’s press conferences remind me of another fictitious character, Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino) from Godfather 2.  When Corleone fronts a Senate committee investigating organised crime, he doesn’t smile or frown.  He speaks in gentle monotone.

 

Pacino’s performance as the Don earned him a nomination as best actor and should’ve earned him an Oscar.  His statement to the committee was a classic moment in cinematic history. 

 

Corleone denied all the allegations and provided the committee with a challenge.  The Senate committee, it seemed, was up for it.  They had a witness in custody ready to testify that Corleone was a murderer, drug dealer and skimmed the profits from Las Vegas casinos.

 

Corleone, despite the evidence, remained calm.

 

Watching Hird each day, it’s easy to imagine him reading out Corleone’s statement to the Senate committee.

 

The statement has been altered, of course, to suit Essendon’s doping allegations…

In the hopes of clearing my family name, and my sincere desire to give Essendon their fair share of the AFL way of life, without a blemish on their name and background, I have appeared before this committee and given it all the cooperation in my power.

 

I consider it a great dishonour to me personally to have to deny that I am a criminal.  I wish to have the following noted for the record. 

 

That I served Essendon faithfully and honourably, winning a Brownlow medal, five best and fairest awards, a Norm Smith medal and two premierships.  I captained the club and I love it.

 

That I have never been arrested or indicted for any crime whatsoever.  That no proof linking me to any criminal conspiracy, whether it is called peptides, amino acids or whatever other name you wish to give, has ever been made public.

 

I have not taken refuge behind the Fifth Amendment, though it is my right to do so.

 

I challenge the AFL and ASADA to produce any witness or evidence against me and if they do not, I hope they will have the decency to clear my name with the same publicity with which they now have besmirched it. 

 

The Senate committee weren’t impressed with Corleone’s statement.  They were less impressed when their star witness retracted his statement.

 

We knew Corleone was a murderer and drug dealer.  We knew Doc McCory was a murderer and bank robber.

 

We know Hird is a legend of the game.  Currently he remains under investigation without charge.  His confidence when he was playing never wavered.  It still hasn’t, publicly at least.

 

Hird remains the ultimate professional.  When he was playing, no deficit was too great, no injury too severe, no ball too hard to get.  As a coach, ASADA, the AFL and its boss, Andrew Demetriou, are just opponents to be bettered.

 

As the doping saga drags on to its inexorable conclusion, Hird’s belief in his innocence is unyielding.  He is either in complete denial, as Corleone was, or he is telling the truth.

 

Hird has fought the doping war with aplomb.  It wouldn’t surprise anyone if he gets away without charge, just like Doc McCoy and Michael Corleone.

 

 

Watch Michael Corleone give his statement to the Senate committee at the link below: 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvfIxjoY1yY

 

 

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