The AFL loves to preach to the masses but can’t even run its own competition in a clean and transparent manner

You’ve got to love Andrew Bogut for summing up how rotten the league’s illicit drug policy is and how claims of “putting player welfare first” are self-serving codswallop.

You’ve got to love Australian basketball great Andrew Bogut and his ability to get to the crux of the matter, often in a devastatingly succinct manner.

His commentary on the AFL’s latest drug saga – where players took secret tests and faked injuries to avoid World Anti-Doping Agency penalties – sums up in a few lines how rotten the league’s illicit drug policy is and how claims of “putting player welfare first” are self-serving codswallop.

“It’s quite obvious what’s happened – the AFL knew they had a problem with guys using drugs, so let’s just have them pull out with a sore hammy and dodge the testing that way,” Bogut said.

“Anyone with half a brain can see why they’ve done it. They’ve obviously tried to move the chess pieces around to navigate a (WADA) policy they have agreed to abide by – because the carrot is federal government funding.”

Andrew Bogut says ‘it’s quite obvious what’s happened’. Picture: Getty

Mocking the AFL’s penchant for preaching on political and social issues, Bogut suggested several new rounds that could be added to the football calendar: “10 strikes not out round, Ping ’til your hammy goes round and just on the waters mate round”.

Let’s be clear; the AFL has been complicit in dodging not only the spirit of the WADA rules but is guilty of engaging in disreputable tactics to ensure players on banned substances do not test positive on match day.

You know how badly the AFL has behaved when the founding president of WADA, Dick Pound, compares its conduct to that of the East Germans in the ’70s and ’80s.

“So the result was no East German, no Russian ever got caught doping because they were pre-tested the day before the competition.

The AFL has a penchant for preaching on political and social issues. Picture: Getty

So this is using old Soviet techniques in 2024,” Pound said of the AFL’s deliberate dodging of the drug code.

Any claim that cocaine is not performance enhancing is absurd. It is on the banned list for a reason.

Even through the week it assists players to keep their weight down and to train harder and faster.

Of course it’s also enormously dangerous to be training at the elite level with cocaine or amphetamines in your system, but clearly the AFL puts player welfare a long way behind protecting its image.

The league can’t say it wasn’t warned.

For more than a decade, in the pages of this paper, I’ve been writing about the AFL’s deliberately flawed illicit drug policy and how it’s designed to hide illicit drug use, not stop it.

Sadly, the bulk of the sycophantic footy media were too busy repeating league propaganda.

The AFL loves to preach to the masses about everything from gender to LGBT rights – it even thinks it’s entitled to tell us how to vote in a race-based referendum – but it can’t even run its own competition in a clean and transparent manner.