There's a man behind the face of the Essendon drugs scandal who needs our help.

Words like “controversial” and “disappointment” and “reclusive” have followed James Hird, the former AFL coach at Essendon Football Club, since February 2013.

Especially the world “guilty”. It’s been used a lot.

February 2013 was when Essendon self-reported to the league’s regulatory bodies. The club, where Hird was senior coach, asked the authorities to investigate concerns about the inappropriate use of supplements during the 2012 season.

It came just before the Australian Crime Commission found professional sport in Australia was ”highly vulnerable to organised crime infiltration”, including doping. It was dubbed the “blackest day in Australian sport.”

Now, Hird has been admitted to a mental hospital following a suspected drug overdose on Wednesday night.

The Victorian ambulance service was called to the family home to attend a “poisoning overdose” just after 10pm two nights ago. The cause of his hospitalisation is yet to be confirmed. It’s been reported to be of a “serious and disturbing nature”.

We should have seen this coming.

Likely, you know about the doping scandal.

A supplement program which, implemented at the club in 2012 under Hird's supervision, should have involved vitamins and amino acids. Instead, it saw the administration of prohibited drugs.

The club was ruled ineligible to participate in the 2013 AFL finals series. Hird was suspended from involvement in any football club for 12 months, effective August 2013.

The story made headlines once again in January 2016 when 34 Essendon players were found guilty by the World Anti-Doping Agency of using the prohibited performance enhancing drug thymosin beta-4 in the 2012 program. They were banned from playing in the 2016 season.

We know this story. We've seen it on news stations, talked about it around dinner tables. We've seen Hird's down-turned face, the word "guilty" following closely behind.

We know all this. We haven't cared to know the rest.

We haven't cared to talk about how, for the past year, Hird has stayed away from social events he should have been at. Nights at the football club. Team reunions.

“Hird has been conspicuous by his absence at many of the reunions held by the 2000 premiership side he led to the single most successful season by a team in AFL history," AFL reporter at Fairfax Rohan Connolly wrote yesterday. Before he started coaching, Hird was the captain of Essendon from 1998 till 2005. Why didn't anyone notice?

We don't talk about the way we've mostly only seen his face - not the face of club doctor Bruce Reid or sports scientist Stephen Dank, who was in charge of the supplement injections - when we've read stories about the scandal.

"I feel guilt, sadness, devastation for the players," Hird told the ABC. These stories have been circling for three years.

We've watched the breakdown of Hird's relationship with friend and former Essendon chairman David Evans. We haven't cared to think about the toll this might have taken.

"Hird has been a friend for 20 years and will be a friend for 20 years more," Evans told the media in 2013.

Now? "Hird has lost many of the close relationships he formed with Essendon people. The most public of those was his falling out with former close mate and Bombers chairman David Evans", Connolly wrote.

In our anger and disbelief and "Aussies love sport" outrage, we haven't stopped to consider Hird, as a person, a family man, as anything but the former coach of an embattled AFL club.

There are reports that Hird has been isolating himself. Withdrawing. Pushing people away.

“He has maintained ties with only a handful of teammates from that team. Many have attempted to contact him to offer their support in vain. Increasingly frustrated at not being allowed to help, some have switched off,” Connolly said.

We didn't think about that.

Once upon a time, Hird was a professional AFL player. He was a star premiership player and the recipient of a Brownlow Medal in 1996. He was inducted to the Australian Football Hall of Fame. He was Essendon's leading goal kicker in 1995 and 1996.

His grandfather was a notable player and president of the Essendon Football Club. His father played for the Bombers also.

This October, it will be Hird's 20 year wedding anniversary.

He has four children with his wife Tania. A daughter and three sons.

These are the facts we do not talk about. That we have not cared to consider as we've witnessed the scathing public criticism and blame that's bombarded Hird relentlessly over the last three years.

Now, he's overdosed. He's almost died. And even now, people still can't stop.

"Oh now we're sympathetic towards a drug cheat who screwed with the careers of many footballers. Such crap. He's a drug cheat and no doubt a drug addict too," one Facebook user commented.

"Get him to Charlie Sheen for advice. That prick has probably snorted every substance on the market without dying," another said.

"Poor little media hoe," another user contributed.

Will we ever learn?

Hird has always maintained he was ignorant of any illegal substance use at the club during his time as coach.

“At no time did I ever, ever consider that banned or performance enhancing drugs would be at our club,” he told ABC News 24. “It is just something that never entered my mind. I still to this date don’t believe that anything banned was given to our players.”

No matter what you think of this - if you think it's an attempt to "dodge responsibility", or if it's an honest recollection of the truth - no one deserves to be rushed to hospital in the middle of the night, reaching out and touching death following a self-inflicted drug overdose.

If you have still no sympathy for Hird. Think about his family.

Take a moment to consider how it might feel for Hird's wife today. His children.

Imagine the four of them sitting there, in their too-quiet home, going over their movements on Wednesday. Maybe wondering why they didn't find him earlier. Why they didn't give their dad, their husband, one more kiss before bed time, one more laugh before dinner.

Undoubtedly, they're thanking God he's still alive. Probably, they're wondering what it means that he is still alive. They'll have no idea how to face the months to come. Always trying, desperately, to erase the memory of coming home to a dark house at 10 o'clock at night and finding a husband, a father, overdosed and half-dead.

They'll be questioning all the things that led to this moment - and we, the public and the media, are culpable. In the choice to blame Hird, we have hammered, and overlooked, too much.

Think of all the parts of the story we've chosen to forget.

Think about all the words other than "disappointment" and "recluse" and "guilty" that we've never cared to consider.

This is a lesson to us all.

No matter how much you care for the team of Essendon, for the code of sport, for the players who have forfeited their careers in the Bombers drug scandal, find in yourself some compassion for the Hird family today.

We owe them that, at the very least.