Jobe Watson must keep Brownlow Medal if AFL not ‘comfortably satisfied’ he’s a liar or drug cheat, writes Mark Robinson

IT would be a historic decision to take away Jobe Watson’s Brownlow Medal because the AFL can’t be “comfortably satisfied’’ he’s a liar or a drug cheat, writes MARK ROBINSON.

• Essendon 34’s final appeal fails
• JON RALPH: AFL must strip Jobe of Brownlow
• Day 3 live trades chat: Sam Mitchell to West Coast?

THE lies, the lack of evidence and the corruption is thankfully over and now the most dreadful of decisions awaits the AFL Commission.

Do they strip Jobe Watson of the Brownlow Medal?

The Commission will feel compelled to, but I’m not sure every member, as well as chief executive Gillon McLachlan, would want to take the Brownlow Medal off Watson.

On Tuesday night the Essendon players lost their appeal in a Switzerland court, which was heard in German, which will now be enforced in Australia.

If the case was heard in Australia, as lawyer and premiership president Peter Gordon has argued, the appeal would’ve won.

Comfortably satisfied is the key phrase.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport said it was comfortably satisfied the players had doped and the appeal court agreed.

Now the AFL has to be comfortably satisfied — despite the absence of positive tests, despite no real proof TB4 was on Essendon’s premises, despite the flimsy “strands in the cable’’ prosecution, despite its own anti-doping tribunal finding the players had no case to answer — Watson doesn’t deserve to keep the medal.

It would be a massively historic decision to strip a player of the most coveted award in the AFL.

In essence, if the AFL stripped Watson of the medal, the AFL would also be calling Watson a drug cheat.

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The AFL Commission knows Watson is not and has never been at fault — and that’s if they took a banned drug.

Time and again they said the players were duped and in its submission to CAS, they asked that the players escape any penalty.

Jobe Watson and his Essendon teammates have lost their appeal in a Switzerland court. Picture: Getty Images

In January this year, they effectively pleaded for mercy for the players.

Now they may want blood.

Time and again the AFL has said this whole saga was about the players, about helping and protecting the players.

It’s time the AFL stood by its own convictions.

Truth be known, the AFL doesn’t know if the players took banned drugs. They think they might’ve, but there’s no absolute proof.

Might’ve, could’ve, perhaps, probably ... they are wishy washy words to justify what would be an extreme and irreversible decision.

The club was at fault here, not Watson and some people would agree.

Others don’t agree. They have zero sympathy for the players and when it was revealed the players didn’t list what they had been injected with to ASADA, the sympathy hit rock bottom.

That revelation hurt the players’ standing.

Jobe Watson with the Brownlow in 2012.

We know all that. We’ve had arguments in the media, around dinner tables, in pubs and on the buses for four years now and no one will ever know what truly happened.

The question is what happens now.

Watson returned to football several weeks ago fully knowing his Brownlow Medal would be an agenda item.

He’s been asked to front the Commission to state his case, whatever that means.

What does the Commission want? Watson to beg? Watson to argue that he was suspended because of circumstantial and unsubstantiated evidence?

They can’t ask him to prove he didn’t take performance enhancing drugs because he can’t prove that.

His evidence was he received injections of AOD 9604 and the “good’’ thymosin and not TB4.

The CAS decision, and then the court of appeal, effectively called Watson a liar.

The AFL, if they take the Brownlow, will be calling him a drug cheat.

The AFL surely has to be more than “comfortably satisfied’’ Watson was either or both.

He keeps it.

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Originally published as Jobe Watson must keep Brownlow Medal if AFL not ‘comfortably satisfied’ he’s a liar or drug cheat, writes Mark Robinson