Previously unseen documents recording interviews between AFL investigators and Melbourne Demons players, staff and officials have revealed claims from within the club about alleged “tanking” during the 2009 season.
Transcripts of the interviews conducted in 2012, three years after the Demons won just four games and finished at the bottom of the ladder, were published by the Herald Sun on Friday.
Among the 58 current and former Demons staff interviewed by AFL investigators was the then coach Dean Bailey, who claimed he was put under pressure to lose games.
“What was said to me was, if I win games I would get sacked,” Bailey said, according to the report. “I was threatened. Yeah, I didn’t like it. I think it was a terrible thing to be bullying and harassing not only me but the rest of the staff.
“Absolutely, I knew if we won those games, I felt that I would get sacked.”
The AFL’s integrity unit was called in to investigate claims the Demons deliberately lost games during the 2009 season in an attempt to secure priority draft picks, available to teams that won fewer than five games.
They were rewarded with the top two draft picks and took Tom Scully and Jack Trengove for the next season.
The chief executive of the AFL, Gillon McLachlan, who was then deputy chief executive, said at the time he was unsure of the definition of “tanking”. The Demons were found not guilty.
However, Bailey and the general manager of football operations, Chris Connolly, were found guilty of “acting in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the competition”. Both were suspended by the AFL.
On Friday, McLachlan defended the investigation, telling 3AW it was “not fair or reasonable to say things were whitewashed”.
“Tanking means different things to different people. What is important here is to understand what the rules say and that was what’s clear, the rule that people would say equates to that in the AFL is not performing on one’s merits,” he said.
“The players went out to win and they were coached to win, but there was evidence … there were decisions made that were prejudicial to interests of the game,” McLachlan said.
The documents also revealed that Bailey, who died of lung cancer in 2014, claimed players who were not seriously injured were kept off the field, while reports given to investigators detailed “fake injuries” that ruled players out of selection.
The AFL has been contacted for comment.
