TA boss should quit over Djoker shambles
CRAIG Tiley owes Australia an apology – and his resignation.
As the Novak Djokovic saga finally reaches an end point just in time for the Australian Open, the immediate commencement of matches doesn’t suddenly exonerate anyone else of blame or criticism.
And the buck starts and stops with Tiley and his board.
This is a victory for fairness over fame, proving that big names who so often bend the system out of shape don’t always get all they want.
Common sense somehow wriggled its way through a warped system to get there in
the end, not that any party has cause to celebrate because the whole process has been a shambles.
When the Victorian government announced a vaccination mandate last year demanding that athletes – much like teachers, health workers and other professionals in various industries – operate under new protocols, they all fell into line.
Get the jab or catch the cab. It’s that simple. Everyone knew that anything between these two extremes was a living nightmare, but Tennis Australia overreached.
Tiley sought a loophole. He knew, as we all did, that world No.1 Djokovic was a vocal anti-vaxxer who wouldn’t get the jab.
Other vaccine hesitant stars like Stefanos Tsitsipas, Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Zverev all accepted vaccination was the way forward.
Within months the tour vaccination rate climbed from about 50 per cent to 97 per cent.
The policy worked. They all wanted to come to Australia and play in the best grand slam of the year.
But Djokovic, just as he did in 2020, thought he was bigger than the pandemic, and Tiley made him bigger than the Australian Open.
He gambled on finding a way to allow Djokovic to have his cake and eat it too.
The medical exemption wasn’t developed for the lowly ranked doubles players or Croatian coach we now know didn’t get jabbed – it was the Djoker card.
Tiley plucked one from his deck and hoped no one would call his bluff.
Now Tiley’s champion, the star of his multimillion-dollar show, is leaving Australia embarrassed and ridiculed.