Eddie McGuire recently turned his attention to the processes of tendering evidence to the AFL tribunal – as did a number of Channel 9 employees, if the AFL rumour mill can be believed.

This yarn kicks off with Eddie McGuire’s Herald Sun column of 27 April (happy birthday, Ace), where he criticised the AFL for its handling of a report and suspension of a Collingwood player.

Collingwood’s Chris Tarrant was reported for an incident which was not caught by the TV cameras. At the Tribunal hearing, umpire Martin Ellis gave evidence of what he saw, four players gave their (contrary) evidence and the Tribunal, in the absence of any footage, accepted the umpire’s evidence and suspended Tarrant for 2 weeks.

In commenting on the issue, Eddie noted that Ellis’ photo “is on every Collingwood dartboard in the country”.

Eddie was rightly aggrieved when his media colleagues took this remark out of context – in an article that was in support of Ellis – and gave it a meaning it was clearly not intended to have.

The crux of Eddie’s original piece was that Ellis had been hung out to dry by the AFL because they didn’t have adequate procedures in place. In particular, their failure to have “patrol cameras” monitoring play to catch the things that the TV cameras do not.

While Eddie did say the supposedly offending remark, his point was that umpire Ellis would be the target of unjustified Magpie fans’ anger because of inadequate AFL procedures – Eddie certainly wasn’t accusing Ellis of doing the wrong thing.

After this had occurred, Eddie was warned by the AFL to not comment on the issue, but he did again in the column of 27 April.

Eddie made some well-reasoned points in his article, the main thrust being that the AFL needs to improve coverage of off-the-ball play.

Perhaps the only thing we could call Eddie to task about was his claim that with no TV evidence, the umpire’s testimony was given disproportionate importance. In a court of law (and please, we’re not suggesting for a nano-second that anything in the AFL vaguely reflects real-world practices), the evidence of the cops is generally given precedence over the evidence of the crims.

Footy players (with the exception of Tony Liberatore) are notoriously protective of fellow players (including their opponents) when in front of the tribunal, so it is no surprise that the umpire’s evidence is given the greatest import by the tribunal.

Aside from us miraculously agreeing with most of what Eddie said, the only curiosity with the article at all was the fact that Eddie wrote it despite the sword of Damocles hanging over Eddie in the form of the most feared piece of communication in footy circles – the AFL “please explain”.

In his article, Eddie makes these completely valid points:

“And before everyone throws the responsibility back on to the broadcasters, these cameras must be single-purpose investigation units… just like in the racing industry. And totally independent. Could you imagine the blow-up if Channel 9 missed an incident involving a Collingwood player? Or if a tape disappeared? TV wants ratings. The last thing television wants is for a star player to be rubbed out. As well, all three broadcasters — Nine, Ten and Foxtel — have varying degrees of coverage and numbers of cameras at games. The lack of patrol cameras is one of the few areas where the AFL is amateurish in its approach.”

We agree with Eddie on these points (except the last bit about the AFL being amateurish in only a “few areas”, but we’ll save that for a later article).

The reason we mention these points, aside from them being reasonable arguments, is because they tie in somewhat tenuously with the next point of our article – the influence of the broadcasters in Tribunal deliberations.

Cut to round 6 of the AFL season, and Collingwood captain, superstar player and great mate of Eddie’s, Nathan Buckley, is reported in the game against St Kilda.

This is the part of the spray where we put down the pom-poms and the “Eddie 3:16” cardboard sign, dust off the gloves and kit up for the obligatory Crikey Eddie-bash.

The first piece of evidence for the prosecution comes from the AFL email rumour mill, which has been doing a roaring trade lately but which is inherently unreliable.

As we said above, we don’t suggest that anything involving the AFL is at all reflective of the real world, so evidence emanating from the rumour mill is perfectly admissible, indeed, compulsorily so.

Just to make it perfectly clear, THIS RUMOUR MIGHT BE A COMPLETE LOAD OF CODSWALLOP.

The yarn goes that within minutes of Nathan Buckley being reported on the field, a call came through to the video department of Channel 9 to save all tapes of the incident. The email that we saw – which, again, we’re very suspicious of – didn’t say who made the call, so we won’t speculate.

According to this source of dubious veracity, it is unusual for Channel 9 to save much of the vision that comes in from the many cameras stationed at the ground.

So who could it have been that had the stroke around GTV 9 to get them to save all of the evidence of this incident?

While we’re always suspicious of the footy email rumour mill, especially where in the first paragraph the author claims that it “comes from a completely reliable source who is great mates with…”, this one seems to have some credence.

The Age noted that “since Collingwood was roundly criticised for mishandling a case against Chris Tarrant two weeks ago, costing him a suspension, the Magpies were taking no chances. They went to the elaborate length of obtaining from Channel Nine a series of still photographs. Apparently, someone at the club has a connection with Nine.”

Of course, this doesn’t support the meatiest of the allegations contained in the email rumour.

But it once again raises our concern that Eddie’s influence at Channel 9 might give rise to – or at the very least in this case, be seen to give rise to -an unfair advantage to Collingwood.

Buckley beat the rap, and certainly on our view of the incident that’s not an unfair verdict.

Whether the rumour is completely true or only true to the extent reported in The Age, it’s a concern that Channel 9 would go to any extra lengths for McGuire’s club.

If any other club wanted stills of a reportable incident, would Channel 9 be able to accommodate them?

If they could, would they charge the club for the inconvenience of trawling through their files?

Conversely, if there was incriminating video footage of Buckley, would it mysteriously disappear from Channel 9’s vaults?

And did Channel 9 alter its usual practices in this instance after the call came through to the video department?

Indeed, even if the rumour is complete balderdash, the fact that it has sprung up is some proof that McGuire’s dual role of club president and Channel 9 golden boy creates an untenable conflict which rival clubs will soon tire of competing against.

Imagine if Adelaide’s Andrew McLeod was rubbed out because of insufficient video evidence to contradict an umpire’s evidence because Southern Cross Broadcasting wanted to turn a much-needed dollar by charging an arm and a leg for Channel 9 Adelaide footage that a certain club in Melbourne might get for free?

As Eddie has asked himself out loud, would the world change if he stood down as Collingwood president?

Probably not in this instance, because if Eddie McGuire, Collingwood footy club fanatic and Channel 9 golden boy, put in a call to the Channel 9 footy department, they would still drop everything.

But if there is a skerrick of truth to the rumour, it raises more issues that we might put to the Packers at the PBL AGM later in the year.

The first might be “chairman – would you tolerate an employee tying up the GTV 9 video department with additional duties completely unrelated to the station’s broadcasting activities simply to assist a favourite footballer of said employee beat an AFL tribunal charge?”