Anti-drug campaigner Dave Culbert has labeled the AFL’s decision to invite James Hird to present this year’s Norm Smith Medal as “disgraceful”.
Speaking on SEN’s Hungry for Sport, Culbert believes Hird’s role in the Essendon supplements saga should be enough to rule him out of presenting any AFL award, let alone one on the game’s biggest day.
“Celebrating someone that has done this to the game in this way, I think is disgraceful,” Culbert said.
“He’s lost the right to do that.
“He was a key player in the most disgraceful anti-doing breach in Australian sporting history.
“It was an orchestrated campaign to try and win the premiership and they got caught.
“In my mind, Stephen Dank, Dean Robinson, Bruce Reid (Essendon club doctor) and Hird…gone, goodbye, you're out. There’s no place for you in Australian sport.
“The AFL encourages people who have broken the rules to still be involved.
“In fact, they were it as a badge of honour and this is just another example of that.”
Culbert said it wreaked of AFL arrogance to jettison Hird from the game then attempt to welcome him back allowing him to present the medal. The AFL said the Norm Smith Medal presenters were selected on a rotation system involving former winners, but such a rotation was news to many in the industry.
“I think that is just another example of the hubris that the AFL continues with,” Culbert said.
“Even if it’s his turn (to present the Norm Smith Medal) he’s lost the right.”
Former Richmond great Kevin Bartlett said he supports the AFL’s decision, citing Hird as a past winner of the Norm Smith Medal as reason enough to welcome him back into the fold.
But Culbert was unrelenting, suggesting Hird’s presence was akin to asking those involved in systematic doping of a cycling team to present the winner of this year’s Tour de France.
He said his reasoning was based on principle, not personality or club involved.
“People think I’ve got this heartfelt desire to tear down the Essendon Football Club and James Hird, but if this was another club, or Australian athletics who had behaved like this, I would have exactly the same view,” he said.
“It’s the principle of all this, more so than the name.”
The outspoken former long-jumper suggested the timing of the announcement not only opened old wound but was counterproductive in the middle of what’s been a thrilling season.
“The AFL didn’t need to do this,” he said.
“Maybe there would have been a storyline saying James Hird had been overlooked for the medal presenting, but in the middle of a sensational season, where we haven’t talked about this rubbish for so long and we’ve admired what the Essendon players have been able to do, instead we’re talking about this.
“And there’s only one group to blame for that and it’s the AFL.”