By Jake Niall, Andrew Wu and Chris Barrett
AFL boss Andrew Dillon has told a briefing of all 18 clubs that the league will continue with a health-based illicit drugs policy.
In practice, this would mean no sanction on the first offence.
The AFL chief executive also told the clubs that incidents of players being held over from playing because of drug use were extremely rare, according to three senior sources present at the meeting who did not wish to be named due to the sensitivity of the discussions.
AFL boss Andrew Dillon.Credit: AFL Photos
The sources said Dillon told club bosses that there were, at most, “a handful” of players who would be sat down – effectively suspended while in drug treatment without the public knowing – per season.
In a meeting following federal MP Andrew Wilkie’s attack on the AFL’s system for dealing with players who have used drugs, Dillon said the illicit drugs policy would remain a health-focused one for players, rather than a punitive system.
Wilkie had told Parliament on Tuesday night that club doctors were holding back players whom they knew had used drugs from playing, using injury as an excuse. This enabled the player to circumvent a positive match-day test for an illicit substance, such as cocaine, that would see the player banned under the anti-doping code (only on match days).
But Dillon, according to those present, said reports suggesting that 100 players were impacted by the practice Wilkie described were “wildly exaggerated.”
The AFL has acknowledged that club doctors had been testing players in the days before a game to stave off a match-day positive test to an illicit drug and has been unapologetic about this practice.
Dillon said he had spoken to the boss of Sport Integrity Australia David Sharpe about the issues that Wilkie, an independent MP in Tasmania, had put on the public record on Tuesday evening.
Wilkie cited evidence he had obtained from ex-Melbourne Football Club doctor Zeeshan Arain, former Melbourne president Glen Bartlett and Shaun Smith, the father of Demon forward Joel Smith, who is under a provisional suspension for drug trafficking and use after a positive test last year. Wilkie has been unable to get Dr Arain’s statement included in the parliament’s records.
The AFL’s mental health expert, Dr Kate Hall, also addressed the clubs, saying that the use of drug tests was a standard tool for treating patients with drug use problems.
Dillon also said that the illicit drugs policy – introduced in 2005 – had helped players recover, and the policy would be improved, the sources said.
The policy is under review and is considered by the AFL to be likely to have changes, including measures that make the player more accountable, but it can only be altered with the consent of the AFL Players Association, which has fought hard against more punitive measures, such as public identification of players who have been found to be using illicit drugs in the AFL’s testing – which is completely separate from the WADA-sanctioned tests done by SIA and which are focused on performance-enhancing substances.
Jake Niall
‘Conspiracy theory’: Why a senior club doctor disputes the ‘phantom injuries’ claim
A current long-serving club doctor has disputed claims “phantom injuries” are used to shield players from match-day drug testing, describing them as a “conspiracy theory”, as Melbourne captain Max Gawn called for tougher penalties for a first strike.
Dr Barry Rigby, the president of the AFL Doctors Association, said doctors were not “conspiring” with players to avoid the world’s anti-doping code, and slammed the “toxic rhetoric” around the issue since allegations made in Parliament by federal MP Andrew Wilkie on Tuesday night.
Melbourne skipper Max Gawn has called for tougher penalties for a first strike.Credit: AFL Photos
Rigby was backed up by a former Geelong club doctor Geoff Allen, who said he had never sent a player off site for drug testing to clear them to play, a practice which Wilkie claimed that former Melbourne club doctor Dr Zeeshan Arain wrote in a signed statement had occurred at the Demons and other AFL clubs.
Wilkie’s allegations have placed the AFL’s illicit drugs policy in the spotlight, but the league and club doctors have defended the “medical model” despite fears players could “milk the system”.
“The insinuation here is we’re doing something that is illegal,” Rigby told this masthead.
“That we are conspiring with the players to somehow avoid the WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] code, that we’re somehow lying about the injuries players have, that we’re somehow keeping a lot of information that coaches and others need to know from them. All of that is just not true.
While Rigby acknowledged players used illicit drugs, he said he had in the past five or so years not come across any instances of players needing to be withdrawn from games because they were in danger of breaching the WADA code.
“I have spoken to most of the club doctors in the last 24 hours and they reflect my experience that I can’t find an instance where that’s actually happened in recent history,” Rigby said.
“I’m not going back too far but certainly in the last few seasons, I can’t find any evidence that it’s occurred.”
Allen, who was at Geelong from 2005-20, said the Cats had not conducted off the record testing during his time at the club.
“I know as a fact from 2006-20 we never did that,” Allen said.
Rigby dismissed claims by Wilkie and Arain that players who failed tests were directed to fake injuries, saying it was not a “practical solution”.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“People who have been involved in football should know better, that it’s almost impossible to make up an injury on a player and have them miss a game of football on the basis of a phantom injury,” Rigby said.
“If they have a hamstring or a calf strain the physios know, high-performance manager, footy manager, everyone knows, and everyone is involved in their rehabilitation. It doesn’t make any sense and is certainly not a practical solution to feign an injury.”
Former WADA director-general David Howman said removing a player from a game to avoid an anti-doping test and a possible sanction might be seen as in the interests of the player’s welfare if they had a drug problem and were being treated for it.
But the secrecy of the system was an issue, according to the New Zealand barrister, who headed the global anti-doping watchdog between 2003 and 2016.
“From a player welfare perspective, I can understand [a governing body having] such an illicit drugs program. I don’t have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with the program not being public at least in terms of its mandate, process and outcomes,” he said.
Howman, who chairs World Athletics’ integrity unit, said he was not suggesting there should be any breach of players’ privacy in such disclosures, indicating there should be more transparency with overall testing result figures each year.
“I don’t understand why they don’t tell the public that this is the program they’re running and this is how they’re running it,” Howman said. “To not have it out there creates a perception which might be contrary to what they’re trying to do.”
Rigby conceded the secrecy around a player testing positive was an area that needed “fine-tuning” but said the overall policy was sound. He said the coach or football manager could be told why a player was unavailable for selection if that player consented.
“We would not condone telling a lie about what’s going on,” Rigby said. “We need to have a mechanism where we can release that player without giving away any confidentiality.
“If we say for personal reasons, then everyone’s going to jump to that conclusion they’ve taken a drug, which may not be the case. How do we manage that player? It’s really difficult.”
Rigby said the public discussion needed to move on from the “draconian” notion that players should be shamed and punished.
“I think there potentially are some players who may look to milk the system, and we need to have a mechanism whereby we deal with those,” Rigby said. “It will be hypothetical because I don’t know any of these.
“Some of the almost toxic rhetoric going on at the moment is doing nothing to help a group of players, the ones who I suspect might be frequent users and often might have other medical issues we have to deal with.
“The last thing we want is to lose them from a system where they don’t feel free to come forward.”
Gawn said there needed to be more of a deterrence in the policy, which he supported despite believing it had “holes galore”. Players are fined $5000 and must undergo counselling and targeted drugs testing for a first strike.
“The deterrent is not there, or it’s fading – there needs to be something bigger on the first strike,” Gawn told Triple M.
St Kilda coach Ross Lyon said he supported the emphasis on player welfare in the league’s drugs policy.
“My view is it’s a model with the right intentions, trying to get the right outcomes,” Lyon said. “It doesn’t seem to have been perfect and there’s some conundrums with that.
“I’m very supportive of the players and the medical and wellbeing model. There’s enough punitive punishment in society, there’s enough pressure on these young men. If you fall foul of the WADA code you’re done for a few years.“
Sport Integrity Australia has been contacted for comment.
Andrew Wu and Chris Barrett
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