Retired Australian Football League Essendon player Nathan Lovett-Murray "has revealed that his series of injections during the club's controversial supplements program began during a pre-season training camp on the Gold Coast in 2011, and he has called for Stephen Dank to finally appear before anti-doping authorities," according to Jon Pierik of THE AGE.
Lovett-Murray "has become the first player to discuss in depth what was a failed supplements and injecting program, beginning in late 2011 and continuing through the 2012 season."
He said that "he had initially been driven to a clinic in the Gold Coast hinterland in December 2011, where he was administered at least 10 injections in his lower back over two days with what he was told were legal amino acids." However, before leaving on the trip "he had signed consent forms to be given a form of Thymosin and the prohibited anti-obesity drug AOD-9604" (THE AGE, 2/11). In a separate piece Pierik wrote James Hird's father "is the latest supporter of the suspended Essendon coach to attack club chairman Paul Little, taking umbrage with his remarks that his son would 'whack' anyone."
In a further sign there "is still work to be done before the relationship between Hird and club bosses is mended," Allan Hird has written, angry that Little, in an interview published on Saturday, said, ''James is a competitive person. As a footballer, if he was whacked on the football field he would whack right back, but that is just the wrong thing for him to do now. There will be no more of that -- no courts, no lawyers" (THE AGE, 2/10).
