Blue Sombrero wrote:
He actually brought it up where it might have stayed in-house but somebody who was there has obviously gone to the press to get it back in the public eye.
Jack was highlighting the fact that in the seventies and eighties, there were about 20 accredited AFL journos and nobody had the time to spend digging around in players' private lives like they do now, and gave this as an example of the difference between then and now. If anything it just proves his point, that there are so many journos now, they have to bring up this sort of stuff to get paid every week.
I was there so I am not quoting a third party.
If you have not met him or don't know what he does for charity, please don't make grandiose statements about who or what he is in your opinion. And don't be so quick to jump on a bandwagon that has been set rolling by something blown out of proportion and without knowing the context. And for those in the know, without him, Richard Pratt was no certainty to come back to the club. We can thank him at least in part for that. It wasn't just Sticks.
This story is years old and was all over the papers at the time. No need for the now generation to get hysterical because they didn't read about it the first time around. It was accepted practice in those days for clubs to have internal investigations into alleged off-field indiscretions and resolve them in-house. Almost all clubs had instances like this. There may well have been cases where women were paid off for real player indiscretions but it was pretty well-known that there were also some women looking for a few dollars who used the system to their advantage. They all had the opportunity to persue their cases though the legal system but didn't.
It's little wonder charities have so much difficulty getting people to help them out when there are so many people who are so happy to run to the media for their thirty pieces of silver with any snippet of controversy that might emanate from their lips. Fortunately, Jack helps when he can, even though he knows he is a soft target.
Say what you like about how he went as president of Carlton in your opinion but please don't defame him from behind the safety of anonymity when you don't know the details. It's just as bad as paying off an anonymous person to shut their trap.
Fair enough, but he still should shut the flower up. Period.