There's a few things there that are very important so let me address them one by one.
Firstly, it's not me saying 12 other clubs had enormous issues or a single article in the Age. The information came from a survey conducted by the AFL of every club. The information is what the clubs reported, voluntarily.
It was presented to senior club medical personnel by the AFLCHO at a meeting in Grand Final week. Somewhat interestingly it didn't make the media for several weeks and only received a brief mention.
There is no dispute about the veracity of the information by the AFL or the clubs. It is their information.
That information contains these crucial points:
Players from 9 clubs were independently sourcing supplements.
So in an area so precarious ASADA's advice is don't take them, you have players off their own bat taking supplements, with no supervision. To my knowledge their isn't a player in the AFL who has had a biochemistry or sports science degree so who was checking the validity of the substances? Where were they being sourced from? Were the conditions they were produced in free of contamination? Were the suppliers ASADA approved? And how many players? Was it 9 players, one at each club or every player at nine clubs which would be what 400 plus?
So there's the first pile of bodies. The question is how did they die, was it natural causes or something more sinister? There's certainly more than enough evidence to justify an investigation.
Then to the club issues. 12 clubs taking medium to high levels of supplements, lacking a single point of accountability, with an unsatisfactory definition of supplements, and flawed selection of support staff personnel.
So here we are pumping lots of stuff into our players, without proper checks and balances, which may or may not fit the definition of a supplement (if not then who knows what it is), and the people in charge haven't been properly selected.
Now which other club's program does that sound like I wonder?
That's a whole new pile of dead bodies, but again we don't know how they died because it has never been investigated.
And then there is this final question. If that is the sort of damning information players and clubs offered up voluntarily, how much other stuff did they choose not to mention?
Again, you're looking at it through an ethical point of view, which isn't relevant to my point.
The drug codes don't care how you transgress. It doesn't matter if you are an Essendon player with a thymosin injection, Travis Casserley with a Sudafed, Ahmed Saad with a sports drink or the Collingwood lads with laced cocaine.
If you breach the code you cop a lengthy suspension. Doesn't matter if you are ignorant, stupid, unlucky or an out and out cheat.
The accepted way to dismiss the evidence in the AFL report seems to be 'yeah but Essendon did worse' and that just doesn't wash. Let's take Essendon as read. They did what they did and were investigated and copped their whack. We can debate if the penalty should have been more or less but we can't debate that they were dealt with by the system. So let's remove them from the equation.
Then read the reply above and tell me where the transparency and integrity is in the AFL's treatment of those 12 clubs and the 9 clubs with rogue players.
It is a disgrace and a sham. And as far as I am concerned every player and official in the AFL that season now wears a shadow on their reputation, myself included, because highly questionable programs have been allowed to pass by without proper investigation.
