Ex-AFL player Rhys Mathieson cops mega ban for performance-enhancing drugs
A former AFL player has been banned from playing football at any level after testing positive to performance-enhancing drugs.
Former AFL player Rhys Mathieson has been handed a three-year ban from playing football at any level after testing positive for performance enhancing drugs.
The Herald Sun confirmed Mathieson returned a positive test last year playing for Wilston Grange in the QAFL and reports he tested positive to banned anabolic steroid oxymetholone.
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Mathieson played 72 games for the Brisbane Lions from 2016 and 2022 and was perhaps best known for pulling out a ‘shotgun’ goal celebration and being nicknamed ‘Beast Mode’.
He played his last AFL game for the Lions in Brisbane’s 2022 preliminary final loss and retired from AFL football at the end 2023.
The 28-year-old did not play football this year because he had been provisionally suspended — now he has been banned until August 10, 2027, but can begin training in June 2027.
Mathieson had been training as a bodybuilder since finishing his AFL career and had been documenting his journey on social media, adding more than 10kg of muscle to his frame.
He came under the AFL’s anti-doping code in 2024 because he tested positive to a performance-enhancing substances within 12 months of retiring from the AFL.
He avoided a maximum four-year ban with his suspension reduced to three years as Mathieson admitted to intentionally using the substance for non-football reasons.
Last year Mathieson spoke on his Rip Through It podcast about drug testers coming to his parents’ house at 5am.
“So 5am in the morning, buzzer is going off at the front door. I don’t live at this residence no more, my mum and dad do,” Mathieson said.
“My poor mum is going, ‘What the hell. Why is there two guys buzzing our door at 5am?’ She’s getting a bit worried, a bit scared.
“(She) sends the old boy there, he’s in his jocks, has to throw on the dressing gown.
“He opens the door and he goes, ‘What do you blokes want?’ … at this hour it’s dark, he can barely see.
“And they’re like, ‘Anti-doping’. He just goes like, ‘Nah, not interested. And shuts it (the door). So he was thinking it was like an electricity company trying to sell him something.
“So then he goes and has his coffee and 30 minutes later they’re still there. He said, ‘Seriously, what do you guys want?’
“And that’s when they said this is anti-doping, we’re here to test Rhys Mathieson.”
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