Essendon is now weighing up whether to take the matter further with adecision on that likely to be made some time this afternoon.
The decision to throw out Essendon's appeal clearly bewildered clubchairman Graeme Mc Mahon and the following is a transcript of his commentsto the media following the decision.
"We have noted the report of the board and while we are obviouslydisappointed we will go away and review it and see what the detail of itis," McMahon told the waiting media.
"We note on a quick reading of it that they have concentrated very clearlyon the discrepancies between the financial penalties. They have made nomention whatsoever in their report of the draft selection penalties.
"The second thing that I am quite surprised about that in clause 28 of thefinding which would seem to indicate that one of the reasons they would notgo ahead and hear it is because it is so close to the date of the draftnext weekend and I don't think that is a proper reason.
"Given that is where we are and that the appeals board has done its job Ithink the football public in general and certainly Essendon believes therewas a compelling case.
"We breached the salary by some $680,000 and from what we know Melbournebreached the cap by more than one million dollars.
"We breached the cap between 1992 and 1996 - we believe Melbourne breachedit between 1992 and 1999. We were fined about $388,000 and they were fined$600,00 but forgiven $250,000. We were given 30 days to pay and they weregiven time to pay.
"On the draft choices we were knocked out of the second round in 1996, theentire rookie draft last year, the pre-season draft this year and we lostthe first and second picks in this year's national draft.
"Melbourne lost its number one pick this year and 1,2 and 3 next year butwere given the number one back - if that is fair cop then I am missingsomething.
"The final point I would like to make is - I believe you have all seen theletter of reply to our original request. All we wanted was the reasons -please explain. We should never have come to the tribunal. The AFL havebeen at pains in that letter - given me to pages on why their decision wascorrect and I can't understand why if that is so why we spent three hoursthe other night with high-priced legal people giving technical arguments asto why the case should not be heard.
"Court should always be a no-no. I believe it is imperative that the leaguebe able to deal with its own decisions and in my view it is just a tragedythat if we had had a yes to our first request and come in here and sat downand talked about it and been given at least a clue as to why these glaringdifferences were there we probably would have walked away.
"Our first request was not to go to appeal. Our first request was for theAFL to explain to us what had happened."
"We would not have come this far if we didn't think we had been poorlytreated. I think pretty well everyone in the football world, including themedia, think that has been the case."
"It is Friday night and there is only a week to go before the draft. Wewill take this away, read the document and see if we have any room tomanoeuvre. We have only just been given the document and it is 28-pageslong."
"The AFL has made its call and we have gone through the processes that areavailable to us and we will just put it down to experience if we decide todo no more."
"I'll leave it to you (the media) to make your own call, you can sit downand compare the figures I have just rattled off to you. I mean they arepretty plain and I cannot understand it - if I could we wouldn't have goneto the AFL and asked for explanation.
"If there is another salary cap issue that arises next year with anotherclub, and it won't be Essendon, but another club will have the Melbournedecision to make a comparison with so that if they thought they were beingbadly done by they could appeal within the 14-day period in accordance withthe rules of the AFL. We didn't have that chance because we had nothing tocompare it to. When our decision was handed down in February we reluctantlyaccepted it but got on with life - it was only when the Melbourne penaltieswere handed down that we thought hang on, this isn't right, something iswrong."
