AFL cannot ignore fact that 2012 All-Australian team needs a review after Jobe Watson’s fall
JOBE Watson has handed back his Brownlow Medal, as the ugly postscript of Essendon’s supplements experiment drags on. Now he must lose other honours from that tainted year, says Michelangelo Rucci.
STEPHEN Dank — and James Hird — still have a lot to answer for.
And AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan is more hopeful than realistic that the decision to move on the 2012 Brownlow Medal from Essendon captain Jobe Watson to Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin closes one of Australian football’s ugliest sagas.
There is still a mountain of legal paperwork to process as the “Essendon 34” seek compensation — already at $17 million in claims — for their losses because of the program Dank put together while Hird was head coach at Windy Hill in 2012.
The AFL’s books should not be closed either. There is still that 2012 All-Australian team to review. Watson was named at centre in a season when he should not have taken the field at all. He is the only Essendon player in that season’s AFL Team of the Year.
Watson should have the All-Australian honour taken from him as well.
There are two recent players who were denied Brownlow Medals for being in breach of the game’s rules — Corey McKernan at North Melbourne in 1996 and Chris Grant at the Western Bulldogs in 1997.
Both were All-Australians in those seasons. But the key point is both McKernan and Grant were eligible to play in every game of these years, except those the AFL tribunal took from them.
Watson should not have played one game in Season 2012. He cannot be remembered as an All-Australian in that season. His place on the honour roll must be cleared.
That 2012 All-Australian team does have Cotchin, on a wing next to Watson. However, it does not include Mitchell. He was Hawthorn’s club champion in 2012 and now one of the Brownlow Medallists of that season, but not an All-Australian.
The All-Australian selection panel needs to be called back to AFL House to address this mess.
Watson also won Essendon’s club champion award in 2012. As AFL clubs regularly honour players with their best-and-fairest awards in seasons when they have been banned by the AFL tribunal, there is no pressing case to strip Watson of the Crichton Medal at Essendon.
The AFL Commission’s decision to deal with Watson’s inappropriateness to be a Brownlow Medallist — but not to deal with the All-Australian honour — is now typical of the mixed messages that come from AFL House.
Take the Lachie Whitfield case at Greater Western Sydney.
Whitfield, Giants then-football chief Graeme Allan and GWS then-player welfare manager Craig Lambert all take negotiated penalties for breaching the ASADA protocol on making AFL players available for drug testing.
But the Giants are spared any club penalties — in particular at the draft table next week — because Whitfield, Allan and Lambert are said to have acted “independently” of the GWS system.
How the Adelaide Football Club must wish it could ask the AFL Commission to revisit the 2012 salary cap case to argue chief executive Steven Trigg, football administrators John Reid and Phil Harper and player Kurt Tippett all acted “independently” ... after all, the club board was left in the dark on the secret clauses in Tippett’s infamous 2009 contract.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au