If throughout the years you have harboured suspicions that drug bans were masqueraded as hamstring injuries – you were right.
It’s the AFL’s place in the hours ahead to explain the principle and the motivation behind the practice and how that fits into the long contentious illicit drugs policy.
They’ll need to explain that to Parliament one imagines as well as the public.
As a beat reporter back in the day this was the story you could never prove. High profile player, untimely hamstring injury, lingered longer than might have been anticipated.
Suspicions were on every street corner, but the information was private and protected. You couldn’t publish because you couldn’t prove it.
Only once was this ever hinted at on the record by Andrew Demetriou – that games were missed because of positive tests for illegal substances.
The system of privately testing AFL players to determine whether they had illicit drugs in their system ahead of a match was laid bare in Federal Parliament by independent MP Andrew Wilkie last night.
They are sensational allegations introduced under parliamentary privilege.
And the facts are accurate.
The idea that there is no consequence for drug use in a football sense isn’t true… players do miss games… but there’s no transparency around it.
The illicit drugs policy has always been shrouded in secrecy. And the tension piece between player welfare, privileged medical information and brand protection has been a constant debate since it was first introduced.
It has never won public approval or confidence. But the AFL and players have always been unrepentant about that – sighting a voluntary code with welfare as the principal consideration.
We went through the phase of learning about self-reporting – which seemed like a loophole before a player would get caught.
Now a second testing regime has been revealed.
The AFL will need to explain to Federal Parliament why this isn’t as clandestine as Andrew Wilkie made it appear.
Sports Integrity Australia only tests for illicit substances on game day… where cocaine and the like are considered performance enhancing.
This AFL system appears built to ensure no player with an illicit substance in their system takes the field, thus the integrity of the game isn’t compromised by a performance enhancing substance.
And a player isn’t left exposed to the four-year ban under the WADA code. The cup test sees to that.
Until today it looked like only the likes of Bailey Smith and Jack Ginnivan felt the consequences of the illicit drug code.
If you’re caught cold and you embarrass the brand you get a two-game ban.
But if you had an illicit substance in your system in the lead up to a game you were banned from playing. And it was called a hamstring.
The AFL will need to fully explain why this is appropriate and necessary and why it isn’t as clandestine as it was made to sound in Parliament last night.
