Hot Topic Off The Books Illicit Drug Test Claims in Bombshell AFL ‘Cover-Up’ - Injuries Faked To Evade Game Day Detection

[bigm386]

This view is so so simplistic that it is just plain wrong.

No it really isn't it's just weak leadership or a lack of any leadership at all.

Let's just pretend it isn't an issue until it's undeniable I guess. Good times.

 

[Stamos]

No it really isn't it's just weak leadership or a lack of any leadership at all.

Let's just pretend it isn't an issue until it's undeniable I guess. Good times.

Huh?
They know it's an issue, which is why they test in the first place.

How is it weak, or a lack of leadership?
The only alternative is no testing at all.

 

[Tjblues]

Somewhat bizarre though isn't it

A rolling deadline, essentially the day of of your shift

But many organisations are similar, turn up clean the day of work, do whatever you want outside of those parameters

This is the part that seems to be tripping some people up (not necessarily you arrow).

WADA/SIA can conduct tests at any time during the season.

If they test you on a Wednesday, they’re looking for steroids/PEDs, this “policy” of the AFLs doesn’t prevent that.

Cocaine is in a category that is considered to be performance enhancing only on game days, the reason being somebody using cocaine on a Tuesday night is not going to benefit from it on a Saturday, whereas other steroids/PEDs can.

If you test positive for cocaine between 11:59 the night before, and the conclusion of any post game testing, you’re in Joel Smiths situation.

If you have cocaine in your system at any other time, WADA don’t consider that to be in any way beneficial to you, therefore there’s no breach of their rules

 

[bigm386]

Huh?
They know it's an issue, which is why they test in the first place.

How is it weak, or a lack of leadership?
The only alternative is no testing at all.

Because they are effectively doing nothing about the issue. They are stopping the anti doping authorities picking up players who are using drugs which are considered performance enhancing by faking injuries.

The fact you struggle to see how this is an issue is actually insane to me.

The AFL are enabling the drug use at club land which sets the standard. 0 leadership.

 

[Tjblues]

Because they are effectively doing nothing about the issue. They are stopping the anti doping authorities picking up players who are using drugs which are considered performance enhancing by faking injuries.

The fact you struggle to see how this is an issue is actually insane to me.

The AFL are enabling the drug use at club land which sets the standard. 0 leadership.

This is the view of the former head of ASADA/SIA.

The all drugs are bad/0 tolerance approach is admirable, but unrealistic in todays society.

There is no simple solution to this issue. What the afl is doing is clearly not perfect, but it’s not heinous or clearly wrong either

 

[Stamos]

Because they are effectively doing nothing about the issue. They are stopping the anti doping authorities picking up players who are using drugs which are considered performance enhancing by faking injuries.

The fact you struggle to see how this is an issue is actually insane to me.

The AFL are enabling the drug use at club land which sets the standard. 0 leadership.

No, they're not. You have this arse-about.
The drugs are only considered performance enhancing if you play with them in your system. The authorities (WADA) do not care about them if you are not playing.
It's like the West Coast doctor withdrawing Brady Hough minutes before the game last year because he found out he'd had too many puffs of his asthma medication.
The doctor wasn't foiling anti-doping authorities. He was stopping Hough from breaking the rules.

The AFL aren't enabling drug use, they are trying to reduce it.

 

[bigm386]

This is the view of the former head of ASADA/SIA.

The all drugs are bad/0 tolerance approach is admirable, but unrealistic in todays society.

There is no simple solution to this issue. What the afl is doing is clearly not perfect, but it’s not heinous or clearly wrong either

This isn't the case in other professional sports. Again not perfect. But NBA do in and out of season testing and it was for everything but changed to exclude weed recently.

Random tests. Not staged nonsense.

 

[bigm386]

No, they're not. You have this arse-about.
The drugs are only considered performance enhancing if you play with them in your system. The authorities (WADA) do not care about them if you are not playing.
It's like the West Coast doctor withdrawing Brady Hough minutes before the game last year because he found out he'd had too many puffs of his asthma medication.
The doctor wasn't foiling anti-doping authorities. He was stopping Hough from breaking the rules.

The AFL aren't enabling drug use, they are trying to reduce it.

So Tommy rocks up to training gets picked based on looking like he is running through walls. Coked up to his eyeballs.

Clean bloke plays VFL. But all good cause privacy.

Fair enough.

 

[FitzroyBlueBagger]

Let's be honest here. No-one of an adult age or temperament is terribly surprised about this.

The AFL are huge spinners of everything. Their manipulation of the media and the public is frankly second to none; they control what we talk about, where the attention goes, what people think or want to see. We don't like excessive free kicks in game because we've been told for years it's undesirable; we don't like rule of the week adjudications because we're told we want consistency. Opinion is framed on Monday, ushered off the stage by Thursday. The Essendon thing was the first real test of the AFL's spin, and frankly it worked entirely too well; it kept Essendon supporters engaged with and around the club despite the club, the coach and the players having lied to the fans and the public at large. Their control and highly structured narrative around when and how information was released - specifically, to undermine ASADA and any inquiry into the situation - had the opposite of a demarketing effect; people who didn't follow AFL followed the scandal, and some continued following the sport afterward.

The AFL's bottom line was always money, and in this way the outcome before the players were hit by WADA was their best of both worlds: they got to hit Essendon with a punishment commensurate (in their opinion) with the crime but the players were able to play, which is the point of the off site recreational drugs testing under scrutiny now. When WADA came through they shrugged and changed the narrative again; instead of the best of both worlds, they got their carrot and manage the players from this point until they retire to ensure compliance and that the full sordid details never come out.

This thing we're looking at now is only in front of us because Wilkie used parliamentary privilege to get around the lawsuits and/or NDA's involved, and it's absolutely cheating in the eyes of ASADA/WADA.

It's the deliberate hiding of positive tests under a smokescreen of injury. Of course it's going to get their back up.

Whether it's actively against the rules though is another thing. This looks as though they commissioned their legal team to find a loophole or a series of them and once found deliberately built an unofficial policy around it, complete with a layered series of unawareness perfect to allow each individual involved to say one of two things: "I cannot tell you who was tested," and "I am protected by doctor-patient confidentiality".

The other side of it is, the AFL - the spiders they are - will absolutely have built a playbook about how to try and spin this. In all situations, the camera lens serves as a focus both towards something and away from something else. It's going to be interesting to see when and where they try and lure the eye to see and what they try to tear our attention away from.

Great post Geth

 

[Blue__Balls]

Seems to be a false assumption here that players are getting on the gear every week and using this system to avoid getting caught and banned.

Any player who is doing that isn't playing footy at all. Any player doing it fortnightly is yoyoing in and out of the side every other week. And player doing it once a month is missing 25% of the season.

Many players have match payments built into their contracts. Many players have games-played causes built into their contracts. Many players have rolling 1-2 year contract extensions which require them to prove their ongoing value to their club. Many players are motivated by dedication to their team, to their teammates, to on-field success.

These are all very strong reasons for players to ensure they're not coked up on a Thursday and having to fake an injury to get out of a game, and they're extremely strong reasons for players to ensure they're not doing it on a regular basis.

The unofficial policy that has been revealed offers some protection to players who * up. It offers less protection to those who take the piss.

And the reality is, all it does is encourage players to utilise their club doctor for testing, rather than walking into a private clinic and then telling the club doctor they have "hamstring awareness". Knowledge of the players condition/habits are at least documented by a club official, and the club doctor isn't being lied to by their players about fake injuries that they might then waste time and resources trying to unnecessarily treat.

 

[Stamos]

This isn't the case in other professional sports. Again not perfect. But NBA do in and out of season testing and it was for everything but changed to exclude weed recently.

Random tests. Not staged nonsense.

Staged?
You know the AFL still do random drug testing, right?

 

[Stamos]

So Tommy rocks up to training gets picked based on looking like he is running through walls. Coked up to his eyeballs.

Clean bloke plays VFL. But all good cause privacy.

Fair enough.

Huh?

 

[Tjblues]

So Tommy rocks up to training gets picked based on looking like he is running through walls. Coked up to his eyeballs.

Clean bloke plays VFL. But all good cause privacy.

Fair enough.

That’s not how it would work though.

If “Tommy” is coked up at training, and he volunteers for a test that shows cocaine, HE DOESNT PLAY

It stays in your system for anywhere from 1-4 days on average, so let’s say for arguments sake they do these tests on a Wednesday before selection on Thursday, you could reasonably assume that anyone who took cocaine after the weekend will be positive, and not selected.

It doesn’t effect clean players, if anything they might get a chance they wouldn’t have otherwise

 

[bigm386]

That’s not how it would work though.

If “Tommy” is coked up at training, and he volunteers for a test that shows cocaine, HE DOESNT PLAY

It stays in your system for anywhere from 1-4 days on average, so let’s say for arguments sake they do these tests on a Wednesday before selection on Thursday, you could reasonably assume that anyone who took cocaine after the weekend will be positive, and not selected.

It doesn’t effect clean players, if anything they might get a chance they wouldn’t have otherwise

It effects club culture, it effects clean players and it effects the integrity of the game.

Do you honestly believe players who are clean would have no issue with a player missing games because they got on the nose beers?

 

[ESKIE]

But cocaine use & possession is illegal?

 

[lily of laguna]

Sadly just shows how much a problem drugs are in todays society

IMO, The fact is it’s ILLEGAL and should be treated as such

There is a very complex and nuanced debate to this topic, but the fact that it is so widespread and available makes legality almost irrelevant.

As we have seen “the war on drugs” has done nothing to address drug use and is a futile and expensive PR exercise.

Sadly Soapy I also don’t have the solutions.


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[katmanblue]

.... Yes they are. It's off the books testing. IE to hide the testing from the independent wada/asada legal agreements with the Aus gov and the afl, testing and regulations

The spirit? Sure.

The letter? Maybe not.

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[katmanblue]

. I’m a Dad and FFS I don’t want my kids hearing how easy it could be to “escape a ban”
... It shouldn’t be confusing.

Perfectly understandable stance.

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[katmanblue]

Coke generally takes 3 days to clear your system, though there are ways to decrease this.

On the other hand I have seen one user test positive two weeks after a very heavy session.

Surely you'd only be having it the day after a you play and only of you have a 6+ day break. An occasional user would probably have no problem navigating this.

Players not being able test negative for GameDay may indicate a more serious issue.

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[katmanblue]

Testing in season, which occurs in most professional sports and a heap of industries.

Don't need to name and shame but you do need to create an environment where players are clean or not AFL players. If they are not AFL players anymore due to drugs the AFL MUST support these players transitioning out of the game.

Test the executives too.

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[bradfisher14]

Surprised and disappointed at some of the takes I've seen on this topic.

A few points:

1. If you think that this has never happened to a Carlton player over the journey, you have your head in the sand.

2. Illicit drugs are of interest to WADA only in competition aka match days. Therefore getting tested privately to avoid participating in said match day and potentially violating the anti-doping rules is a sensible approach to take.

3. Pulling out of a match to ensure you do not violate the WADA code is not the same as evading an anti-doping test.

4. Surely society is mature enough to understand how prevalent recreational drug use is throughout society. I'm frankly shocked to see how many people are crying foul about the "integrity" of the sport when this has obviously been going on beneath the surface for decades. The hand wringing from the wowser minority in Australia never ceases to amuse me. I hope that one day very soon we are able to adopt a decriminalisation and harm minimisation approach across the board.

PS. Not sure what's going on with the title of this thread. Clearly the illicit drugs tests are taken by club/AFL doctors and therefore are very much "on the books." Unnecessary sensationalism to sink the boots into the Dees just IMHO.

 

[Blue__Balls]

It effects club culture, it effects clean players and it effects the integrity of the game.

Do you honestly believe players who are clean would have no issue with a player missing games because they got on the nose beers?

Clean players would most certainly be pissed if they had teammates missing games because they'd been on the drugs. And that alone should tell you that this system is not a free pass for players to do so - because if they are taking the piss like that then it is 100% going to get back to the leadership group and the player will fast find themselves on the outer. Lose the support of the playing group, lose the support of the coaches...lose your spot on the list.

If a player does it once or twice and then gets pulled into line...well, that's probably part of the maturing of the level of idiot that is an average AFL footballer. That would be the system working as intended - 18-20yo suddenly comes into money and fame, does some dumb s**t, gets a reality check from the club doc and leadership group, learns to avoid the gear or at least limit it to the offseason. Better outcome than a 4-year ban.

Now the argument that professional players shouldn't do drugs at all is a separate matter. Hell, nobody should do them in my view. That's coming from someone who has never and will never do them, and someone with kids who absolutely worries about the best way to ensure they never touch them either. But if a dumb, rich 20yo does, I'd like to think that we can at least give them the benefit of a stern warning, extra education, and a second chance.

 

[OldBlueFan]

... I hope that one day very soon we are able to adopt a decriminalisation and harm minimisation approach across the board.

I wouldn't be holding my breath on this one. People have been advocating this approach for literally decades, and there has been no indication of any movement toward it in the western world.

Far far too many vested interests in some drugs being illegal for this to change any time soon.

 

[Stamos]

Clean players would most certainly be pissed if they had teammates missing games because they'd been on the drugs. And that alone should tell you that this system is not a free pass for players to do so - because if they are taking the piss like that then it is 100% going to get back to the leadership group and the player will fast find themselves on the outer. Lose the support of the playing group, lose the support of the coaches...lose your spot on the list.

Sure, but from the clean players' point of view, I'm sure they'd prefer a teammate to miss a game in preference to copping a 2 year ban.

 

[Stamos]

I wouldn't be holding my breath on this one. People have been advocating this approach for literally decades, and there has been no indication of any movement toward it in the western world.

Far far too many vested interests in some drugs being illegal for this to change any time soon.

I wouldn't say no movement towards it.
Pot is now legal in a lot of the US for example.
Also drugs like MDMA and magic mushrooms being used as clinical treatments.
It sure is slow, though.