Essendon’s woes have bubbled over again today with a report in The Age that the AFL warned James Hird in late 2011 to not involve his players in a peptides program.
Caroline Wilson’s story says “sources close to the joint investigation by ASADA and the AFL into Essendon have told Fairfax Media that the AFL warning came after senior league officials had learnt that Hird had been investigating the anti-doping status of certain peptides”.
“The AFL had allegedly been told that Hird was investigating peptides in his determination to introduce a high-performance program heavily punctuated with substances that would prove to be a new frontier in the fast-tracked strength and conditioning of his senior team,” the report says.
“Evidence has also emerged suggesting that Hird’s senior assistant, Mark Thompson, cautioned the Bombers’ coaching group and football staff against the injecting program.”
AFL boss Andrew Demetriou refused last night to speculate on whether Essendon players could avoid sanction over the club’s supplements saga because of uncertainty over the classification of the drug at the heart of the investigation.
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The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA_ provided advice last year that the drug, AOD-9604, which Essendon captain Jobe Watson has admitted to taking, was not prohibited, Fox Footy’s AFL 360 program reported on Tuesday night.
ASADA gave the same advice to an AFL anti-doping official in March this year and an ASADA investigator told a briefing of Essendon players in May that the prospect of successful prosecution of players who took the drug last year was very low, the program reported.
The advice reportedly given by ASADA contrasts with a statement issued by WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) in April.
WADA said in the statement that AOD-9604 was banned under the S0 clause of the anti-doping code, which prohibits the use of any substance that has not been approved by any governmental regulatory health authority for human therapeutic use.
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Demetriou, who said last Friday there was uncertainty over the classification of the drug, said he would not comment on what it might mean for Bombers players, but looked forward to the completion of the investigation, expected in August.
“All I’m going to say is what I said the other day and that is that there is some uncertainty around the status of AOD-9604,” Demetriou told Fox Footy on Tuesday night.
“What I don’t want to do is pre-empt the outcome of the investigation.
“I’ve said continuously that the public, the media, the football world, are demanding answers, they want to know, they should know.
“We are all very keen to get the outcome of the ASADA investigation and that’s when those questions will be answered.”
Demetriou said last week the view from WADA that the drug was banned contrasted with the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) report into drugs and crime in sport, released in February, which said it wasn’t.
The ACC released a statement on Tuesday night saying they received correct advice from ASADA while compiling their report – that AOD-9604 was not banned under schedule S2 of the WADA prohibited list, which specifies certain categories of banned substances.
But the ACC said WADA was the “pre-eminent authority and expert in this field” and the ACC welcomed the clarification provided by WADA in April that AOD-9604 was prohibited under the S0 classification.
