Whose day of shame is it?
Six months after Federal Justice Minister Jason Clare talked of Australian sport’s “day of shame”, just where are we?
In mid-February this year, Clare stood alongside Sports Minister Kate Lundy and listed the findings of a year-long investigation by the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) that Clare said had found widespread use of banned drugs in Australian professional sport and links with organised crime.
The report said the links “may have resulted in match-fixing and fraudulent manipulation of betting markets” – and it was hopeful criminal charges would be laid.
The investigation identified widespread use of prohibited substances in professional sport.
It also said that some players were being administered with substances that have not yet been approved for human use.
“The ACC has found that professional sport in Australia is highly vulnerable to infiltration by organised crime. Multiple athletes from a number of clubs in major Australian sporting codes are suspected of currently using or having used peptides,” Clare said in his opening statement on February 12.
“The findings are shocking and will disgust Australian sports fans,” he added.
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Fast-forward to August and what do we have?
No players have been charged.
Four officials from Essendon Football Club have been charged, but not under any drug laws or any other Australian legislation – rather they have been charged by the Australian Football League under its own rules for bringing the game into disrepute.
Those charges relate to Essendon’s internal review that found a culture of “pharmacological experimentation” in the use of peptides.
The officials – James Hird, Danny Corcoran, Mark Thompson and Bruce Reid – say they will vigorously defend the charges.
One of the key issues appears to be erroneous advice, accepted by the club, that an anti-obesity peptide was legal, when it hadn’t been approved for human use.
The peptide, AOD9604, was on the banned list of the World Anti-Doping Authority from January 2011, but not an the banned list of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority until much later.
Sure, Essendon has some governance issues – they appear to have been too eager to accept assurances about peptides.
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But so does ASADA (why was there a delay in putting AOD9604 on the banned list so that athletes would know?).
So does the Australian Crime Commission (you can’t accuse entire sports of having a drug culture and then not be able to sustain one single charge).
And so do Jason Clare and Kate Lundy: two Federal Government Ministers that should have been more cautious in accepting the conclusions of the Australian Crime Commission when the report itself talked of gathering intelligence, as opposed to gathering evidence.
The players are in the clear, for now: there have been no positive tests to performance enhancing substances and as for the claims about links to organised crime, well that appears to have faded away.
Essendon captain Jobe Watson says he and his AFL teammates feel vindicated by the AFL’s decision not to charge them with anti-doping violations.
While AFL general counsel Andrew Dillon on Tuesday night charged the Bombers and four of their officials with bringing the game into disrepute, he said on evidence to hand no anti-doping charges would be laid against players.
Watson has already told media that he was injected with AOD-9604 on the advice of the club doctor that it was all above board.
He’s been let down by the club officials and unfairly implicated by the storm unleashed by federal ministers and the ACC.
“As we’ve said all along, none of us believed we’d done anything wrong in relation to the 2012 supplements program,” Watson said last night.
“We’ve fully co-operated with every part of the ASADA investigation and we’ve always said we’ve got nothing to hide.
“We feel vindicated by this announcement and hope this helps confirm the faith of our supporters and the broader football public that, as professional sportsmen, we would never do anything to compromise the integrity of the game, our team, or our own values.”
The players have every right to take a few pot-shots at those who were taking pot-shots at them in the last six months.
Instead, they’ll just play football.
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