Collingwood to pay banned rookies Lachlan Keeffe and Josh Thomas during drug bans
COLLINGWOOD will pay banned rookie list pair Lachlan Keeffe and Josh Thomas as they sit out of football for an entire season.
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COLLINGWOOD will pay banned rookie list pair Lachlan Keeffe and Josh Thomas as they sit out of football for an entire season.
But the Magpies are adamant their players won’t not profit from two-year drug bans, with the salaries effectively matching the $50,000 fines handed down last year.
Key position player Keeffe and midfielder Thomas were both handed the maximum ban after unwittingly ingesting banned drug clenbuterol while partying.
They were also fined $50,000 as permitted by ASADA and the AFL for their role in the controversy.
They are only eligible to play football from 2017 on, but as a show of faith Collingwood redrafted them as rookies for the 2016 season.
After talks with the AFL and Players Association, Collingwood will pay them an agreed sum for the 2016 season
Collingwood chief executive Gary Pert confirmed a nominal fee had to be paid to the players as part of the standard playing contract and agreement between AFL, Players’ Association and the Pies.
The club is in control of that amount but has chosen to pay a fee that will effectively cover modest living expenses.
The AFL and Essendon are still in talks over whether the Dons will pay the salaries of the five banned players who have left for other clubs.
But many of the player managers of those Dons believe they will receive most of their salaries this year despite not playing.
St Kilda has an in-principle objection to players with drug bans being paid, which has led to them requesting Essendon compensate Carlisle.
Olympian David Culbert said it was a strange precedent to pay players, even if WADA rules allow some of a player’s salary to be handed over.
“Certainly in the aths world you have to pay back the prize money you have won and most people in the Olympic world would find it bemusing you would receive anything let alone full pay,’’ he said.
“If the AFL are going to approve them being paid in full, they are saying they didn’t do anything wrong and saying they didn’t breach the rules and that CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) got it wrong.
“If the punishment is that you are missing games but there is no financial punishment, what is the disincentive for the next bloke to do it as well. You could just roll the dice.”
He said most athletics stars who received endorsement deals from footwear manufacturers had clauses to annul those relationships if they tested positive to drugs.
Collingwood can only discuss welfare matters with Keeffe and Thomas this year and is banned from giving them advice on training and medical issues.
The pair admitted they had taken illicit drugs at a night out at the St Kilda festival, with clenbuterol contained in those drugs.
“We can only assume it occurred in a night out prior to testing, when we took illicit drugs,” Thomas said last year.
“At no stage did we knowingly take clenbuterol.”
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