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[span style='font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;]Footy diets were once pretty simple.


Need protein? Eat steak and fish.



Need carbs? Pasta and bananas.



Need to wake up? Black coffee, no sugar.



Need to write yourself off? Slab of green cans.



As footy deviated onto an increasingly pragmatic trajectory, footballers themselves began to stray from that well-trodden gastronomic path.



Need protein? Blend up a milkshake full of powdered chemicals that will give you backne and liquefy your guts.



Need carbs? No you don't. Carbs make you fat.



Need to wake up? Take five of these No-Doz pills then pop a couple of sleeping pills after the game to knock yourself out.



Need to do a number on yourself? Grab a carton of Cruisers, Breezers or anything that smells like a tropical fruit and matches at least one colour on your sleeve tattoo. But not beer. Too many carbs.



Would Ted Whitten have drunk protein shakes and Midori Illusion Shakers if a sports scientist told him to?



No, he would have whipped up a couple of Molotovs and hurled them at the sports scientist's car.



So what would Mr Football make of the 2012 Essendon Bombers' diet?



Notorious Essendon sports scientist Stephen Dank this week identified a selection of substances he claims to have injected into Essendon footballers last year.



Pig brain peptides, sometimes prescribed to Alzheimer's patients to increase alertness; bovine colostrum, otherwise known as the first milk of a birthing cow, to increase protein levels; thymosin peptides to boost players' immune systems; and anti-obesity drugs, because professional athletes of course require medical intervention to maintain a healthy BMI.



Dank claims that imported sheep placenta was next on the menu, but the scandal broke before that delicacy could be sourced from overseas.



It's hard to know what to get angry about first.



Should we be furious at Dank for injecting footballers with substances not yet approved for human use?



Should we be furious at the clubs, officials and administrators who have tacitly encouraged the medical brinkmanship that has given rise to such tactics in the quest for a winning edge?



Should we be furious that we've got 82 million sheep walking around in this country and Stephen Dank couldn't find a solitary bloody Australian Made sheep placenta to inject into Essendon footballers?



Perhaps none of them deserve the brunt of our righteous anger.



No one thinks for one second that Stephen Dank is a paragon of moral virtue. Any charges that stick to him will only reinforce what most of the country already thinks. When questioned on some of his methods, he responded, Well we won 11 of the first 14 games&amp;hellip;I was very happy with the science.&amp;rdquo; He's no good.



We've already lamented the win-at-all-costs mentality that pollutes today's football clubs. And we've tried fruitlessly to find a meaning of integrity that the AFL might understand. In the end, raging wildly at Dank, the clubs or the AFL is worthless, because we don't expect anything better of them anymore.



But we expected better from James Hird.



The football world has looked up to Golden Boy for the better part of 20 years. We hurt for him when he had his face caved in at Subiaco and had to live in Perth temporarily because he couldn't get on a plane; we cheered for him when he gave it to umpire Scott McLaren with both barrels on the Footy Show; and we hugged the ginger kid in the crowd with him when he jagged the match-wining goal against West Coast the following week.



Dank now alleges that Golden Boy's aura itself is chemically enhanced by the drug Melanotan II, used for tanning among other things; and further enhanced by Hexarelin, a drug that can increase human growth hormone levels, which are of course crucial to a successful career sitting on a chair in the coach's box.



Perhaps Dank is a vindictive liar, hell bent on ruining Hird's reputation and bringing the house down around his ears; perhaps every word he has uttered is the truth and Hirdy's on the juice and sweating on the arrival of his sheep placenta shipment.



But perhaps it doesn't matter who is telling the truth.



Hird knew that Dank was injecting his players with something other than a flu shot. That much is undisputed.



If he knew that they were being injected with pig brain peptides, bovine colostrum and anti-obesity drugs, some of which were not approved for human use, he was complicit in acts that reasonable football followers would consider unacceptable.



If he didn't know and did not bother to inform himself as to what his players were being injected with, he has fallen far below the standard of professionalism and care that we must demand of any AFL coach, let alone one of his reputation.



As professional sport hurtles headlong into uncharted, potentially dangerous territory, the line has to be drawn somewhere before someone gets hurt.



It would be a sad day for football if that line were drawn through James Hird. But that day might be coming.



And so to another week of sport&amp;hellip;.
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