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A collective of Australian professional sportspeople says athletes and fans have been failed over the past year, calling for a new integrity unit to help stop threats to sport.
Lax health and safety standards, poor investment in player wellbeing and growing integrity challenges such as match-fixing have led the Australian Athletes Alliance (AAA) to muscle up to sporting bodies.
Launching a campaign on Wednesday to give athletes more power to govern and protect their sports, AAA general secretary Brendan Schwab said athletes were not the cause of major problems.
“Athletes need to be empowered to be the first line of defence against threats to the integrity of sport,” he said.
“The challenges for Australian sport will be to address its own shortcomings, appreciate that corruption and cheating does not begin with athletes and to stop treating athletes as the problem, instead of the solution.
“If we look at football, cricket and some of the workplaces in AFL and rugby league, it’s been clear they have been victims of poorly governed situations through no fault of their own … which threaten their careers.”
Representing 3500 professional athletes in eight of the country’s biggest codes, the AAA has called for the creation of an athletes’ integrity unit to address major challenges.
Tired of responding to crisis situations involving athletes, including the high-profile ASADA supplements scandal that has engulfed the AFL and NRL, Schwab said a new regime was needed.
“(The ASADA case) has played a part but I don’t want to overstate that because we represent sports like cricket and soccer as well … global sports that have had problems with poor governance and match-fixing.”
Fronting the campaign are high-profile athletes Adam Goodes, Mark Schwarzer, Greg Inglis, Meg Lanning and Ricky Ponting.
Schwab, a former head of the Australian footballers association and current world footballers’ union vice-president, said the integrity unit would be a world’s best solution.
The unit would be a whistleblower service and one-stop-shop for Australian athletes, both overseas and at home, on integrity challenges.
“Athletes need to be empowered to be the first line of defence against threats to the integrity of sport,” he said, “and Australia is uniquely placed as we have our athletes organised so we should take advantage of that.
“(The unit) would provide the best level of engagement and education to players … and it could hold sports to account.”
The challenge will be to find funding for the unit, a task Schwab said he would throw himself into.
The AAA sits above professional player associations for eight sports: AFL, basketball, cricket, football, horse racing, netball, rugby league and rugby union.