The AFL remains at loggerheads with Essendon and four of their top officials over what punishments should be handed out over the club’s supplements scandal.
Nearly eight hours of talks into Monday evening failed to reach any conclusion and discussions will resume on Tuesday morning.
The club, coach James Hird, senior assistant Mark Thompson, veteran club doctor Bruce Reid and Bombers football manager Danny Corcoran are facing AFL charges relating to conduct unbecoming and bringing the game into disrepute.
There is widespread speculation that the AFL wants to strip the club of this season’s premiership points, ban Hird for 12 months and also dock Essendon of valuable draft picks.
One of the sticking points is the Supreme Court writ that Hird took out last Thursday against the AFL.
While the writ is alive, it is understood the AFL’s position is that it will not let Hird coach the team.
Hird is conceding he faces some sort of penalty from the AFL over the 2011-12 supplements program at Essendon.
But he and the club will not tolerate any suggestion that they are drug cheats.
Thompson also said if Hird was banned for the 2014 season, the senior coach would find it difficult to come back.
“If he was to lose 12 months it’d be disastrous,” Thompson told Fox Footy’s AFL 360 program.
“He’s a young coach who is learning his way and he didn’t deliberately set out to do anything wrong.
“I would think if the AFL knocked him out for 12 months, he would struggle to want to get back.”
Thompson, a two-time Geelong premiership coach, said he had not considered a possible one-year role as head coach in Hird’s absence.
“It hasn’t been offered to me. It hasn’t been talked about,” Thompson said.
“James is our coach and we’re going to try everything we can to help him … get a fair sanction for what he’s done.”
Thompson said he was locked away in a room at AFL House with his lawyers from about 1pm to 6pm.
Reid and his legal team were the first to leave league headquarters just before 7pm, with senior club officials locked in talks with the AFL until 10pm.
Hird was seen driving away from the AFL, with wife Tania in the passenger seat.
“We’ve just been negotiating all day basically,” Thompson said, adding his case was nowhere near being resolved.
“I just turn up tomorrow in my suit, go back in my little office and try to negotiate another deal.”
Officially Monday’s proceedings were an AFL Commission hearing to rule on the charges against the Bombers.
But clearly much of the time was taken up in negotiations between lawyers.
The league is determined to finalise its case against Essendon before the September 6 start of the finals.