Quote:
Originally posted by wellard:
He as single handedly brought down the world wide image of Australia as the uber sports nation on earth.
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I think that might be overstating it just a tad
. His taking a diuretic (be it a mistake or even to mask performance enhancing drugs) has hardly destroyed our standing as a strong sporting nation. And our attitude to drugs wasn't exactly healthy before this, witness the Ben Tune affair and the shooting guy at the Comm games. Completely foolish yes, single-handedly ruined us? Not quite
It's a weird sentence I think. If they truly thought it was being used knowingly as a masking agent they would have had to give him the full sentence. Yet if they believed his story then 12 months does seem overly harsh. Personally I think they're giving him a long sentence to show Australia is serious about drugs, bit of damage control over the aforementioned incidents plus the hooha from Dick and so on, but not so long that his retirement would be a certainty - giving him room to come back and redeem himself and get to 500 wickets.