Peter Gordon says clubs must know if players test positive to drugs

WESTERN Bulldogs president Peter Gordon has called for the AFL to change its controversial illicit drugs policy and tell club chiefs about “known users” who flaunt the system.

Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon.

WESTERN Bulldogs president Peter Gordon wants club chiefs to be to told about “known users” who flaunt the AFL’s illicit drugs policy.

Gordon says he fears secrecy surrounding the policy could expose impressionable draftees to unidentified teammates abusing drugs.

Strict testing rules agreed by the league and the AFL Players’ Association mean club doctors are the only officials notified of strikes or positive hair tests.

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“I frankly don’t understand the position of the AFLPA,” Gordon said.

“It’s one thing to have an interest in protecting the privacy rights or the civil rights of players who use illicit drugs … but they also represent those young blokes who are coming into the competition who have a real health and safety issue being exposed to the wrong influences.

“I’d like there to be a regime in which club management had more detail disclosed so that we know — all of us, including the boards, who the relevant users are.

Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon.

“I don’t want to know for gossip purposes — I want to know and I want my management to know so that we can take proper steps to protect and police.”

The Dogs boss said he was an “advocate” for clubs conducting their own drug testing to compliment the AFL system.

“If someone wants to smoke a joint in December, six weeks after the season … truthfully that is not going to keep me up at night,” Gordon said on the Beyond Reasonable Clout podcast.

“But what I want to know is if there are people who are known users who are on my list that I am taking steps to give them as much education, counselling and, frankly, warning about their position.”

Gordon said full disclosure would allow clubs to intervene if drug users are “fraternising or forming groups with young impressionable individuals”.

“There is some limited information which is provided to nominated officials within the club, who are themselves forbidden from telling the board and other senior members of the club, including the coach,” he said.

Bulldogs president Peter Gordon and AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan. Picture: Mark Stewart

“I am one of a number of club presidents who think that it is terrible that we don’t get more information in our club’s interest.

“The PA was principally concerned with protecting the player’s right to privacy and were concerned that their stocks and marketability would not be diminished, I guess, by clubs taking a dim view of it.

“But it’s the clubs who are the employer - and the clubs have a non-delegable duty of care as the employer - not just to the player but to all of the other players.

“To the extent that any club might be concerned about young players who have been drafted from the other side of the country, moving away from their families for the first time …. and being put in an environment where they are mixing with people who are known to the AFL to be using illicit drugs - but not to us.

“As clubs, we may be putting those young players — at the most vulnerable age, at the age that they are most likely to start using — into harm’s way, by putting them into contact with people, but we don’t know about it.”

Gordon said he knew of clubs that had recruited players and “found out one way or another down the track that what they got traded into was a player who had an illicit drugs policy background.”