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Mega Thread Hot Topic - Drugs and AFL
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Ford Fairlane
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https://www.foxsports.com.au/horse-...e/news-story/2800f28efe7ce9134cdbdc662cc4b2d1
So the AFL are saying illicit drugs are not performance enhancing
So the AFL are saying illicit drugs are not performance enhancing
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RussellEbertHandball
Flick pass expert
I am going to have cancel my conspiracy theory posted on page 313 post number #7,825.
In that post I said - Andrew Wilkie is married to ( ex Major General) Simone Wilkie who has been an AFL Commissioner since 2015. Might have been an interesting conversation between them the last few days - I have been thinking there is no way that Andrew wouldn't have discussed this with Simone, and no way Simone wouldn't have set him straight about how the AFL's illicit drug policy works.
Cancel That! Andrew was married to Simone between 1991 and 2003. They are both ex military.
I don't know how reasonable their relationship is, but provided its ok, you would have thought an ex military intelligence officer, his last job before entering politics, was at the Office of National Assessments as an intelligence analyst, would have spoken to his ex wife to find out how the AFL illicit drugs policy actually works.
In that post I said - Andrew Wilkie is married to ( ex Major General) Simone Wilkie who has been an AFL Commissioner since 2015. Might have been an interesting conversation between them the last few days - I have been thinking there is no way that Andrew wouldn't have discussed this with Simone, and no way Simone wouldn't have set him straight about how the AFL's illicit drug policy works.
Cancel That! Andrew was married to Simone between 1991 and 2003. They are both ex military.
I don't know how reasonable their relationship is, but provided its ok, you would have thought an ex military intelligence officer, his last job before entering politics, was at the Office of National Assessments as an intelligence analyst, would have spoken to his ex wife to find out how the AFL illicit drugs policy actually works.
Has Senior Corn on 5CC mentioned it’s merely a storm in a tea cup yet?
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this time it is an ocean in a salad bowl
Edit- and after that poor effort I'm out.
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Why would the AFL know the numbers if it is kept confidential between doctor and patient?Only an "incredibly small number" of AFL players have been protected by secret drug tests in the past decade, the head of the AFL Players Association says.
AFLPA chief executive Paul Marsh says speculation 100 players have been granted some immunity by club doctors over drug test results is guesswork. Marsh stressed only the AFL would know the true figures but in his experience the number of players involved in such cases was minute. "It feels like the commentary around this is that it's happening every week," Marsh told SEN Radio on Thursday.
"I've been doing this job for nearly 10 years and there would be less than a handful of players that this has been an example for. (An) incredibly small number. "Nowhere near the level as perhaps ... this story is suggesting."
Small numbers, clubs aware of secret drug tests: AFLPA
Players boss Paul Marsh has spoken out over the AFL's drugs-test bombshell, saying clubs are aware of the program that affects an "incredibly small" group.thewest.com.au
+BenRoberts-Smith VictoriaCrossHammerMclachlachlanwarcrimes
a hyphen is a <tell> and invariably will denote eastern suburbs northern beaches or Adelaide Hills claremont
GremioPower
Taking notes of policy re: bikini/lingerie images
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It’s Russian roulette with the odds against you.
Yes, you can win; but I personally prefer not to try. I think there are better ways to enjoy life.
KurtzConradcompoundApocalypsemarloncoppolaWatsonsdog
apart from ferball I think warcrimez is lost on the figbooty cockney meta
i have mentioned it before but in first jwh admin in 90s the first defence mp was an adelaide hills squattocracy stPeters uncle
but SimoneexwifeW may have requested AW to use parliamentary privilege to break it , that is how the real world works
one may like to have incontrovertible evidence , but world operates in the fissures and seams so to block yourself off from that is a fools game
and THAT^ may have been the purpose of a .p.u.t.a.t.i.v.e. Andrew Wilkie mp leak
It was nothing of the sort , it has been engendered to garner support for drug code changes
ferball. @maddaddam's opinions
Wilkie gets significant FaceTime on nightly News /newstime /primetime media
invaluable for an independent
why you will see Jacqui Lambie and Pauline Hansen and Clive Palmer do outrageous performances as media spectacle
see: DJT
RussellEbertHandball
Flick pass expert
Chip Le Grand who wrote a book about the Essendon Drugs scandal, wrote a long article in Sunday's Age about Wilkie's allegations but spoke directly to the Melbourne Doctor Zeeshan Arainw who accuses Wilkie of effectively grandstanding.
It sounds like the good doctor was trying to document that Melbourne had too many cases of illicit drug taking, a cultural problem, rather than dodgy secretive procedures. He backs the AFL illicit drugs policy 100%.
Looks like Dr Arainw had his agenda and Wilkie had his to make the biggest splash possible. It also might have been a proud Tasmanian sticking it up the AFL for demanding a $700+m stadium with a roof or you wont get a Tassie team.
www.theage.com.au
Zeeshan Arain, the former Melbourne club doctor who ignited the latest drugs scandal to engulf the AFL, never intended to blow up the league’s illicit drugs policy or the use of “off-the-books” tests to stop players running foul of anti-doping rules.
Arain says the national competition’s approach towards illicit drugs is one of the better things the AFL has done.
When Arain provided a statement to independent MP Andrew Wilkie to ventilate under parliamentary privilege, his target was a damaging culture he observed at the AFL club he served for eight years as chief medico and the impact this had on players under his care.
“I wasn’t attacking the illicit drugs policy,” Arain tells this masthead. “I wanted to expose cultural problems, not off-the-books testing.
“My comments about the testing were just factual. I wasn’t revealing a scandal. The illicit drugs policy is probably one of the better things the AFL does. If this becomes a strict name and shame policy and I have contributed to that, I will feel really remorseful for the players.
“I don’t want to be seen as a hero whistleblower, I just want to be someone who advocates for the mental and physical wellbeing of players in a high-pressure industry.”
How then did Arain’s observations about Melbourne – many of them fiercely contested by Demons senior coach Simon Goodwin and publicly dismissed by club chief executive Gary Pert – form the basis of what Wilkie denounced in parliament as a systemic failure by the AFL to prevent the use of prohibited drugs and a multimillion dollar fraud on taxpayers? It is a complicated story but worth telling to explain a drugs issue which is serious, but not the sinister cover-up alleged by Wilkie.
Arain’s statement, seen by this masthead, documents a disturbingly high prevalence of illicit drug use among players at the Melbourne Football Club where he was responsible for managing the health and welfare of players who admitted to substance use.
Arain estimates that roughly one third of the playing group never touched drugs, a third occasionally used and the rest were frequent users of potentially harmful drugs which, if detected on match day, can attract career-ending penalties under the World Anti-Doping Code. This last group included players with drug dependencies and others who used drugs to manage mental health issues or cope with the extreme pressures of playing at the top level.
[ To me this is the real story behind Wilkie's allegations in parliament is as follows not the secret tests BS,
1) that 1/3rd of Melbourne players are frequent users, not the stock standard AFL spin that only a handful of players across the league or that the 1% to 2% that used to show up when the AFL published its stats - the last lot was for 2013 in the 2014 AFL annual report, before Gilligan wanted drugs off the front page thanks to Essendon drugs fallout, and by not publishing stats, they can get away with saying its only a small number when we know there are plenty of self reporting case, and
2) that the AFL forcing players to miss games so they wouldn't test positive to a stimulant like cocaine, Meth, MDMA etc on game day, not for health reasons, but for wealth reasons. The stimulant effect WADA doesn't want from cocaine and other drugs to have in game day washs out within 24 hours, but the metabolites like benzoylecgonine for cocaine, stays in a person system for upto a week ]
This masthead does not know about which players it is alleged fall into the respective categories, and therefore does not suggest that any particular player takes illicit drugs. Arain’s concerns about drug use were not limited to players but extended to club staff, including senior coach Simon Goodwin. The allegation against Goodwin, which the doctor based on concerns he says were raised with him by an unnamed player and club staff member and his own observations about the coach’s behaviour, is denied by Goodwin and dismissed by Pert, who last year wrote to Melbourne members saying he investigated the claims and found them to be “completely without basis or truth”.
[Anyone who knows anything, knows Goodwin's background on this issue. Ex Melbourne prez Glen Bartlett was kicked out of the job in April 2021 just weeks after he was endorsed as chairman, because he wanted to go after Goodwin and other staff members. Its why he gave Wilkie stuff and why he is suing Melbourne FC - well the new Prez Kate Roffey and 3 other directors and is now considering suing Gawn, Goodwin and Pert over what they said in October about Bartlett.]
This masthead has not independently investigated Arain’s allegations about Goodwin, and has therefore not spoken to anyone who has confirmed the allegations. Goodwin and Arain had an increasingly strained working relationship. This masthead is not saying the allegations are true, only that they were raised by Arain when he left the club and more recently in the statement he provided to Wilkie. Goodwin has previously addressed the allegations at length, telling SEN Radio last October: “It has been documented over and over and over again in the public, and it’s been really hard for myself, my family and enough is enough. I don’t use illicit drugs and I never will.”
Arain left Melbourne in October 2020, a year before the club won its drought-breaking premiership. His departure was acrimonious and abrupt, and announced to him shortly after he raised concerns about the coach’s approach towards him and players under his care. This culminated in a bullying and unfair dismissal claim which was settled for a modest, undisclosed sum.
In settling Arain’s complaint, then club president Glen Bartlett listened to what the doctor had to say about the club, its culture and his allegations about Goodwin’s drug use. The allegations were taken seriously by Bartlett, who raised them with AFL chairman Richard Goyder and chief Gillon McLachlan shortly before Bartlett was ousted by his fellow directors for reasons that three years later, remain bitterly disputed.
Bartlett has since returned from Melbourne to his hometown of Perth, where he splits his time between running his workplace law practice and a defamation case he is pursuing in the Federal Court against current president Kate Roffey and other club directors. If the case ever reaches trial, it will provide enough linament-scented drama to rival David Williamson’s The Club.
This is where Wilkie’s sharp-eyed political adviser, Rohan Wenn, an investigative journalist and former chief of staff to Nick Xenophon, stepped in. About six months ago, Wenn separately approached Arain and Bartlett to find out what story they had to tell. It took both men many months of convincing to agree to tell Wilkie their stories. Arain now regrets his part in it. Bartlett declined to comment. Pert did not return calls from this masthead.
Arain, frustrated that the major parties twice blocked Wilkie’s attempt to table his statement, is dismayed at how his principal motivation – to advocate for the welfare of players he treated at Melbourne, has been lost in the maelstrom about the AFL’s illicit drugs code.
Wilkie, a former intelligence officer who quit his job with the Office of National Assessments over Australia’s decision to go to war in Iraq after the 9/11 terror attacks, has dedicated much of his parliamentary career to uncovering malfeasance in corporate and public office. He is also no friend of the AFL, in part due to its reliance on gambling revenue and more recently the Hobart stadium deal it imposed on the Tasmanian state government as the price of entry for a team for the state. In May last year Wilkie told parliament: “Sure, like many Tasmanians, I’m delighted by the news that Tasmania will finally get an AFL team, but the AFL’s condition that we must build another stadium first is, quite frankly, extortion befitting a top Melbourne mobster.”
As an intriguing aside, Wilkie’s ex-wife, Major General Simone Wilkie, is a long-serving AFL commissioner. When approached for comment on this story, Andrew Wilkie was not available for interview. [I mentioned this last week but Chip was the first person I have read or heard link the 2.]
........
The most contentious part of Arain’s statement is where he explains the rare scenario of a player presenting to him after taking drugs in the week before a game. “If a player came to me and said they’d used drugs over the week, I gave them three options. I would say they could go and tell the coach that they couldn’t play because of the risk of still having something in their system. The second option was to fake an illness or injury. Or the third, and my least preferred method, was to organise some independent, private testing to ensure things are out of their system before the game.”
Arain’s description of these last two options – feigning injury or illness – or resorting to “off the books testing” under a program facilitated by the AFL’s former chief medical officer Peter Harcourt, has put the illicit drug code squarely in the sights of Sports Integrity Australia (SIA), the agency responsible for administering and upholding the WADA code in Australia. Wilkie on Friday provided the material he has gathered to SIA, at the agency’s request.
Liberal senator Richard Colbeck, a former sports minister who as part of his portfolio responsibilities served on the executive committee of WADA, says the AFL’s illicit drugs policy is clearly in breach of anti-doping rules. “The drug policy is going to have to change,” Colbeck tells this masthead. “If it doesn’t I think there will be real difficulties for the AFL. Taking a urine test and finding an excuse not to play on game day, that is evasion of possible testing in-competition. There is no way known that WADA, SIA or anyone can allow that to continue. It is clearly in breach of the WADA code and WADA will not stand for that.”
......
If SIA or WADA wants to force significant change, it will need to take the policy out of AFL hands. Arain, for one, dearly hopes that doesn’t happen.
From page 52 of 2014 AFL Annual report ( published March 2015), the last year the AFL issued stats on their illicit drugs process. Demetriou has said he doesn't know why the AFL stopped publishing the stats. The main reason was a) this policy was his baby and b) Gilligan took over in April 2014 and had to deal with the Essendon drug scandal, so he didn't want to have deal with the illicit drug policy, especially if the numbers blew out.
It sounds like the good doctor was trying to document that Melbourne had too many cases of illicit drug taking, a cultural problem, rather than dodgy secretive procedures. He backs the AFL illicit drugs policy 100%.
Looks like Dr Arainw had his agenda and Wilkie had his to make the biggest splash possible. It also might have been a proud Tasmanian sticking it up the AFL for demanding a $700+m stadium with a roof or you wont get a Tassie team.
He blew the whistle on the AFL drugs scandal. Here is what Melbourne’s ex-club doctor wants to change
Zeeshan Arain says he documented a disturbingly high prevalence of illicit drug use among players at the Melbourne Football Club and wanted to expose a cultural problem, not blow up the league’s drugs policy.
Zeeshan Arain, the former Melbourne club doctor who ignited the latest drugs scandal to engulf the AFL, never intended to blow up the league’s illicit drugs policy or the use of “off-the-books” tests to stop players running foul of anti-doping rules.
Arain says the national competition’s approach towards illicit drugs is one of the better things the AFL has done.
When Arain provided a statement to independent MP Andrew Wilkie to ventilate under parliamentary privilege, his target was a damaging culture he observed at the AFL club he served for eight years as chief medico and the impact this had on players under his care.
“I wasn’t attacking the illicit drugs policy,” Arain tells this masthead. “I wanted to expose cultural problems, not off-the-books testing.
“My comments about the testing were just factual. I wasn’t revealing a scandal. The illicit drugs policy is probably one of the better things the AFL does. If this becomes a strict name and shame policy and I have contributed to that, I will feel really remorseful for the players.
“I don’t want to be seen as a hero whistleblower, I just want to be someone who advocates for the mental and physical wellbeing of players in a high-pressure industry.”
How then did Arain’s observations about Melbourne – many of them fiercely contested by Demons senior coach Simon Goodwin and publicly dismissed by club chief executive Gary Pert – form the basis of what Wilkie denounced in parliament as a systemic failure by the AFL to prevent the use of prohibited drugs and a multimillion dollar fraud on taxpayers? It is a complicated story but worth telling to explain a drugs issue which is serious, but not the sinister cover-up alleged by Wilkie.
Arain’s statement, seen by this masthead, documents a disturbingly high prevalence of illicit drug use among players at the Melbourne Football Club where he was responsible for managing the health and welfare of players who admitted to substance use.
Arain estimates that roughly one third of the playing group never touched drugs, a third occasionally used and the rest were frequent users of potentially harmful drugs which, if detected on match day, can attract career-ending penalties under the World Anti-Doping Code. This last group included players with drug dependencies and others who used drugs to manage mental health issues or cope with the extreme pressures of playing at the top level.
[ To me this is the real story behind Wilkie's allegations in parliament is as follows not the secret tests BS,
1) that 1/3rd of Melbourne players are frequent users, not the stock standard AFL spin that only a handful of players across the league or that the 1% to 2% that used to show up when the AFL published its stats - the last lot was for 2013 in the 2014 AFL annual report, before Gilligan wanted drugs off the front page thanks to Essendon drugs fallout, and by not publishing stats, they can get away with saying its only a small number when we know there are plenty of self reporting case, and
2) that the AFL forcing players to miss games so they wouldn't test positive to a stimulant like cocaine, Meth, MDMA etc on game day, not for health reasons, but for wealth reasons. The stimulant effect WADA doesn't want from cocaine and other drugs to have in game day washs out within 24 hours, but the metabolites like benzoylecgonine for cocaine, stays in a person system for upto a week ]
This masthead does not know about which players it is alleged fall into the respective categories, and therefore does not suggest that any particular player takes illicit drugs. Arain’s concerns about drug use were not limited to players but extended to club staff, including senior coach Simon Goodwin. The allegation against Goodwin, which the doctor based on concerns he says were raised with him by an unnamed player and club staff member and his own observations about the coach’s behaviour, is denied by Goodwin and dismissed by Pert, who last year wrote to Melbourne members saying he investigated the claims and found them to be “completely without basis or truth”.
[Anyone who knows anything, knows Goodwin's background on this issue. Ex Melbourne prez Glen Bartlett was kicked out of the job in April 2021 just weeks after he was endorsed as chairman, because he wanted to go after Goodwin and other staff members. Its why he gave Wilkie stuff and why he is suing Melbourne FC - well the new Prez Kate Roffey and 3 other directors and is now considering suing Gawn, Goodwin and Pert over what they said in October about Bartlett.]
This masthead has not independently investigated Arain’s allegations about Goodwin, and has therefore not spoken to anyone who has confirmed the allegations. Goodwin and Arain had an increasingly strained working relationship. This masthead is not saying the allegations are true, only that they were raised by Arain when he left the club and more recently in the statement he provided to Wilkie. Goodwin has previously addressed the allegations at length, telling SEN Radio last October: “It has been documented over and over and over again in the public, and it’s been really hard for myself, my family and enough is enough. I don’t use illicit drugs and I never will.”
Arain left Melbourne in October 2020, a year before the club won its drought-breaking premiership. His departure was acrimonious and abrupt, and announced to him shortly after he raised concerns about the coach’s approach towards him and players under his care. This culminated in a bullying and unfair dismissal claim which was settled for a modest, undisclosed sum.
In settling Arain’s complaint, then club president Glen Bartlett listened to what the doctor had to say about the club, its culture and his allegations about Goodwin’s drug use. The allegations were taken seriously by Bartlett, who raised them with AFL chairman Richard Goyder and chief Gillon McLachlan shortly before Bartlett was ousted by his fellow directors for reasons that three years later, remain bitterly disputed.
Bartlett has since returned from Melbourne to his hometown of Perth, where he splits his time between running his workplace law practice and a defamation case he is pursuing in the Federal Court against current president Kate Roffey and other club directors. If the case ever reaches trial, it will provide enough linament-scented drama to rival David Williamson’s The Club.
This is where Wilkie’s sharp-eyed political adviser, Rohan Wenn, an investigative journalist and former chief of staff to Nick Xenophon, stepped in. About six months ago, Wenn separately approached Arain and Bartlett to find out what story they had to tell. It took both men many months of convincing to agree to tell Wilkie their stories. Arain now regrets his part in it. Bartlett declined to comment. Pert did not return calls from this masthead.
Arain, frustrated that the major parties twice blocked Wilkie’s attempt to table his statement, is dismayed at how his principal motivation – to advocate for the welfare of players he treated at Melbourne, has been lost in the maelstrom about the AFL’s illicit drugs code.
Wilkie, a former intelligence officer who quit his job with the Office of National Assessments over Australia’s decision to go to war in Iraq after the 9/11 terror attacks, has dedicated much of his parliamentary career to uncovering malfeasance in corporate and public office. He is also no friend of the AFL, in part due to its reliance on gambling revenue and more recently the Hobart stadium deal it imposed on the Tasmanian state government as the price of entry for a team for the state. In May last year Wilkie told parliament: “Sure, like many Tasmanians, I’m delighted by the news that Tasmania will finally get an AFL team, but the AFL’s condition that we must build another stadium first is, quite frankly, extortion befitting a top Melbourne mobster.”
As an intriguing aside, Wilkie’s ex-wife, Major General Simone Wilkie, is a long-serving AFL commissioner. When approached for comment on this story, Andrew Wilkie was not available for interview. [I mentioned this last week but Chip was the first person I have read or heard link the 2.]
........
The most contentious part of Arain’s statement is where he explains the rare scenario of a player presenting to him after taking drugs in the week before a game. “If a player came to me and said they’d used drugs over the week, I gave them three options. I would say they could go and tell the coach that they couldn’t play because of the risk of still having something in their system. The second option was to fake an illness or injury. Or the third, and my least preferred method, was to organise some independent, private testing to ensure things are out of their system before the game.”
Arain’s description of these last two options – feigning injury or illness – or resorting to “off the books testing” under a program facilitated by the AFL’s former chief medical officer Peter Harcourt, has put the illicit drug code squarely in the sights of Sports Integrity Australia (SIA), the agency responsible for administering and upholding the WADA code in Australia. Wilkie on Friday provided the material he has gathered to SIA, at the agency’s request.
Liberal senator Richard Colbeck, a former sports minister who as part of his portfolio responsibilities served on the executive committee of WADA, says the AFL’s illicit drugs policy is clearly in breach of anti-doping rules. “The drug policy is going to have to change,” Colbeck tells this masthead. “If it doesn’t I think there will be real difficulties for the AFL. Taking a urine test and finding an excuse not to play on game day, that is evasion of possible testing in-competition. There is no way known that WADA, SIA or anyone can allow that to continue. It is clearly in breach of the WADA code and WADA will not stand for that.”
......
If SIA or WADA wants to force significant change, it will need to take the policy out of AFL hands. Arain, for one, dearly hopes that doesn’t happen.
From page 52 of 2014 AFL Annual report ( published March 2015), the last year the AFL issued stats on their illicit drugs process. Demetriou has said he doesn't know why the AFL stopped publishing the stats. The main reason was a) this policy was his baby and b) Gilligan took over in April 2014 and had to deal with the Essendon drug scandal, so he didn't want to have deal with the illicit drug policy, especially if the numbers blew out.
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