Mike Fitzpatrick declares Essendon supplements ‘almost certainly performance enhancing’

TWO Essendon figures have fired back at former AFL commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick for declaring the supplements used by the Bombers in 2012 were “almost certainly performance enhancing”.

Former AFL commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick.

ESSENDON legend Tim Watson has hit back at retired AFL commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick for declaring the substances used by the club in 2012 were “almost certainly performance enhancing”.

In an explosive interview to be aired on Fox Footy’s Open Mike tonight, Fitzpatrick reveals he was told by a rival player that the Bombers had presented that season as though “they had done five pre-seasons in one”.

“And I think that kind of summed it up,” Fitzpatrick said.

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Watson fired back on SEN this morning, claiming Fitzpatrick “was telling his mates on the golf course exactly the same thing and that was before the investigation had even been completed”.

“So, Fitzpatrick’s source is another player,” Watson said.

“I’m not surprised to actually hear this from him either ... that tells you he had already done his own research and that had been based on talking to a rival player who said they presented five times.

Tim Watson and his son Jobe Watson. Picture: Michael Klein

“I don’t know what happened to their season if that’s the case, because they started losing games at about the halfway mark and then didn’t pick the season up after that.

“So whatever they were on wasn’t long lasting.”

Watson’ son Jobe was stripped of the 2012 Brownlow Medal as a result of the scandal.

Businessman Paul Little, Essendon’s president at the height of the crisis, told Triple M this morning: “Why Mike would come out now with his views on something that can’t be proven one way or the other is beyond me.

“I think it’s time to move on, the Essendon footy club want to move on, so Mike should move on.”

Fitzpatrick’s comments have poured fuel on Essendon’s already flatlining season.

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On the status of the injections administered by Essendon, Fitzpatrick said: “They either didn’t know what was in it, or if they did know, they weren’t going to say. There was circumstantial evidence as to what it was.

“My point of view was that it was almost certainly performance enhancing, but even if it wasn’t ... the penalty in the end that the AFL put on Essendon was to do with duty of care and the general behaviour towards the players.

“You couldn’t be totally certain (that it was performance enhancing).”

Tipped by some experts to win this year’s premiership, Essendon has slumped to 15th on the AFL ladder after a calamatious 13-point loss to Carlton at the MCG on Saturday.

The form slump triggered a war of words between Bombers legend Kevin Sheedy and favourite son Matthew Lloyd after Lloyd declared Essendon was no longer a “great” club.

Former AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou and commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick. Picture: Michael Klein

“He is a lovely guy, Matthew, but never coached really, never been involved seriously in a football club from a point of view of developing a club,” Sheedy said yesterday.

“His job is media now, and he has got to make outlandish statements like that, and good luck to him.”

But it is the comments from Fitzpatrick that will most anger factions at Essendon that remain outraged by the AFL’s handling of the game’s greatest crisis.

Asked if the AFL would have done anything differently with the benefit of hindsight, Fitzpatrick told interviewer Mike Sheahan: “Fundamentally not, I don’t think. It was a disappointing part of footy. It shouldn’t have happened, duty of care, you know, player welfare, just ... something happened at Essendon that shouldn’t have happened.

“We essentially found out about it pretty much when everybody else did, which was well after that season.

“And so we spent a lot of time finding out very quickly what had happened ... and it wasn’t a pretty sight.”

In reference to the role played by Essendon chairman David Evans over the first six months of the drugs crisis, Fitzpatrick said: “I would have thought, and I think initially, the club basically was very cooperative but that changed and I think it became an unfortunate battle.”

He said Essendon players had been administered “thousands of injections ... with substances which apparently they weren’t too sure what they were”.

Former Essendon CEO Ian Robson, chairman David Evans and coach James Hird

The Essendon 34, including six players still at the club and another five now playing at different clubs, were initially cleared of doping by an AFL anti-doping tribunal before the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the verdict in January 2016.

Coaching great Mick Malthouse last month declared Essendon was still scarred by the scandal which handed “life sentences” to the suspended players.

But Essendon chairman Lindsay Tanner said on Saturday that relations been the AFL and club chiefs had dramatically improved since the height of the drugs crisis.

Tanner said he had chosen not to attend a recent gathering of disgruntled Melbourne-based club presidents, arranged by Hawks boss Jeff Kennett, because the Bombers had “no complaints” about the league’s administration of the game.

“Whatever unhappiness anybody in the Essendon fraternity may have had about the AFL in that period, they should be absolutely 100 per cent supportive of the AFL in the last couple of years because they have done the right thing by the club when we’ve been in deep trouble,” he told 3AW.

The full episode of Open Mike with Mike Fitzpatrick airs tonight at 8.30pm on FOX FOOTY, channel 504 on Foxtel.

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Originally published as Mike Fitzpatrick declares Essendon supplements ‘almost certainly performance enhancing’