Respected Victorian lawyer David Galbally reveals he warned the AFL about the potential for a drug scandal to arise five years before the Essendon supplements saga.
Galbally, who spoke on Great Australian Lives with Laura Turner for Tobin Brothers – celebrating lives, said he informed the AFL of a list that contained the names of several AFL clubs and players.
This list was linked to a gym owner who had been supplying performance enhancing medicines to local footy clubs.
“It was an issue that about five or six years earlier, I had warned the AFL about,” Galbally told Great Australian Lives.
“I was involved in a case up in the country and the client I was working for had brought in a man who owned a gym and he was said to have imported some illicit drugs.
“Now they weren’t heroin or anything like that. They were all these medicines that were used for gyms and pumping your muscles up and all that sort of stuff.
“There were clubs and names of players on a list, and I saw the list, and I said to the AFL I think there might be a problem here.
“They said they didn’t think there was a problem. Five years later it blew right up.”
While Galbally doesn’t believe there’s anything more to come from the Essendon supplement saga, he believes players are still tempted by the desire to find every possible way to improve.
“I don’t think there’s more to come out from the scandal, but I think clubs have come a long way since then. Everybody’s more alert and aware,” he said.
“We’d all be fools to think that in such a competitive age of sport, particularly with the AFL, that the temptation for athletes would still be there.
“In order to get the edge in training, they would be tempted to take drugs.”
You can listen to the full interview with David Galbally and Laura Turner for Tobin Brothers below.