Rita Panahi on West Coast Eagles secret report: Protect the brand, whatever the cost
THE human cost of the West Coast Eagles drug saga has been immense but authorities including the AFL have largely escaped scrutiny, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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THE AFL’s ironically named Integrity Unit would have its hands full if it were fair dinkum about investigating the league’s own activities.
Australia’s premier football code has a rich history of cover-ups, bullying, media manipulation and brand management at all costs.
West Coast Eagles’ destructive culture of drugs and cover-ups has been exposed but the AFL has largely escaped scrutiny for its complicity in that shameful period.
Worse still, the league learned little from that fiasco and repeated the same mistakes during Essendon’s supplements episode.
The circumstances may be vastly different but the AFL’s eagerness to manufacture an outcome at the expense of truth and transparency is a reoccurring theme.
That preoccupation with suppression, spin and control are evident in the AFL’s handling of other controversies such as the Melbourne tanking investigation.
On Tuesday the Herald Sun revealed the contents of the damning 2008 Gillard report into widespread drug use and criminality at the Eagles that was systematically covered up by officials. Some of those officials remain at West Coast today or have senior roles elsewhere with the AFL and its clubs.
WEST COAST SCANDAL EXPOSED IN TOP-SECRET AFL REPORT
Astonishingly, the man at the helm of the Eagles when they descended into drug-fuelled destruction is still there as CEO.
Trevor Nisbett would not have survived this long without support from AFL headquarters. If the AFL wanted him gone, he’d be gone.
But the good old boys’ network remains strong within the football world where mediocrity and failure can be rewarded by plum posts.
Back in 2003, well after the Eagles and the AFL should have known of serious issues at the club, new AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou invited the West Coast chief to become the league’s football operations manager. Nisbett declined the role that ultimately went to Adrian Anderson. Remarkably, when Demetriou announced his resignation in 2014, Nisbett’s name was mentioned as a replacement, despite everything we knew by then about his mishandling of the Eagles crisis. This was a problem that festered to the point that it destroyed the lives of several men.
The Eagles were dominant on and off the field but the playing and financial success masked an ugly reality. You only have to look at what has become of some of the elite players from that era to realise the enduring impact of that ugly culture.
Club champion Chris Mainwaring died from an overdose, Brownlow champion and captain Ben Cousins is in jail and this week pleaded guilty to 11 offences, including stalking and drug possession.
WHAT BEN COUSINS SAID ABOUT HIS DRUG USE
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Premiership player, All Australian and Brownlow runner-up Daniel Kerr has been in and out of jail, premiership player Daniel Chick for several years suffered from drug addiction and continues to battle health issues, and Chad Fletcher is lucky to be alive after flatlining during an end-of-season trip.
There are other players who’ve been left physically and mentally shattered; lesser names long forgotten whose lives have been destroyed by drug dependence.
Last month former Eagle Ben Sharp pleaded guilty to charges of armed robbery and drug trafficking in the Victorian County Court.
He blamed the Eagles’ rotten drug culture for ruining his life.
The court heard that at the tender age of 18 Sharp was introduced to heavy drugs and told, “you’re either in or you’re out”.
“I had to use cocaine,” Sharp said. “I thought it was a way to get in with the boys, so I used coke.”
He went home three years later failing to play an AFL game but saddled with a raging cocaine and methamphetamine addiction.
When another player at the club, alarmed by the rampant drug abuse, approached officials with his concerns, they took the extraordinary action of “dobbing him in” to the leadership group, some of whom were the worst off-field offenders.
Instead of learning from the Eagles’ drug problems, the AFL has taken steps to make its illicit drug code even less effective.
Sure, on the one hand it has reduced the policy from three to two strikes but the league has also introduced a new element that makes it nearly impossible for a player to ever be named or suspended.
By legitimising the drug code’s biggest loophole, the league has ensured that players are protected from exposure and the AFL’s brand is protected from further damage.
Under the code, if a secret panel accepts that a player’s illicit drug use is linked to mental health issues, then that player will not be named or suspended, regardless of how many positive strikes he records.
Again, the AFL’s unhealthy obsession with spin and image is at the heart of its dysfunction.
It can’t say it wasn’t warned.
In his report, retired Supreme Court judge William Gillard advised the AFL that it should establish an independent body to deal with off-field misconduct.
AFL URGED TO SET UP INDEPENDENT BODY TO PROBE MISCONDUCT
But instead of putting the recommendation into action, the AFL remained preoccupied with keeping the explosive 87-page report secret.
It did that successfully until this week.
It’s little wonder that the AFL never sanctioned the Eagles for overseeing a reckless period of spin and cover-ups; the Eagles were only emulating what they saw from league headquarters.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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