Former Essendon AFL coach James Hird has reportedly been taken to hospital after suffering a “major” health scare.
The Herald Sun reported Hird was taken by ambulance to Cabrini hospital in Malvern, south of Melbourne, but left the hospital on Thursday and continued to receive care elsewhere.
A spokeswoman for Cabrini Hospital said she was unable to confirm the report or provide any further comment due to patient confidentiality issues.
Hird was one of Essendon’s biggest stars playing 253 games between 1992 and 2007 and was part of premiership winning teams in 1993 and 2000. He also captained the club from 1998 to 2000 and was named coach at the end of 2010.
His glittering career took a hit, though, when caught up in the 2012 supplements scandal that rocked the AFL, for which he served a 12-month suspension.
Hird has said he now accepts “a level” of responsibility for the supplements scandal.
In early January, the court of arbitration for sport upheld the World Anti-Doping Agency’s appeal against an AFL tribunal decision to clear 34 players of taking the banned substance thymosin-beta 4 while Hird was coach, handing 34 past and present players a 12-month ban.
Hird said he should have done more to prevent the situation that enveloped the club, cruelling its performance since 2102 and potentially ending careers.
“It is not just 2016 that it has wiped off [for the players] and potentially beyond but it has been 2013, 14 and 15 where they weren’t able to get the opportunity to play the football to their ability,” he said.
“I have a level of responsibility in that. I should have known more. I should have done more when the opportunity came. I feel extremely guilty for that and bad for that. I can only apologise for that. I made decisions in real time that in hindsight, I think were wrong.”
But Hird said others at Essendon made the situation worse and hinted the AFL had denied the club and the players a fair hearing.
“I don’t feel like a victim myself but those 34 players are victims of this situation, a situation that, at the first instance, is the responsibility of the Essendon football club,” he said.
“The football club and as a part that I had in it, has to put up its hand and say we made mistakes... Those mistakes were compounded by people in authority and outside the club. When I feel guilt, sadness, devastation for the players, I am also upset at the way the procedural fairness or process was enacted to deny our players procedural fairness and the football club fairness.”
• AAP contributed to this report
