“I have to take a share of the responsibility for the noise and the confusion, absolutely,” he says. “I was deeply involved in that Essendon stuff. We came to it with two objectives in mind, to protect the health and welfare of the players involved and to protect the integrity of the competition,” Gill tells The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Gill, 40, then deputy CEO of the AFL, headed the AFL team that negotiated with the Bombers about penalties that ultimately resulted in the team’s ousting from last year’s finals series – the only such penalty handed out in AFL history – a $2million fine and the one – year suspension of coach James Hird.
The decisions, carried out behind closed doors, brought barrage of criticism down on the AFL about a lack of transparency in dealing with such a volatile situation.
“I am very comfortable with the decisions that were made [and] while we feel the decision was right, the broader issues about process, and the other challenges we faced because of that, were damaging, no doubt,” he tells The Weekly.
“If we had our time again, then we would probably do it differently… But to put it simply, I have to take responsibility for the things that we got wrong.”
