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One thousand and sixty-eight days ago, a controversy broke so large that it threatened to tear the very fabric of Australian sport.
Nobody knew how to comprehend the news. Doping had always been something we heard about in the Olympics or the Tour de France.
Not in our game. Not by our players.
We wanted those responsible to be held accountable; to be punished so severely that nobody would dare bring our game into such disrepute again.
But the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) decision to suspend the ‘Essendon 34′ for the entire 2016 season – after three years of heavy penalties both league-sanctioned and personally felt – missed the mark.
More:
» Essendon players found guilty, will miss 2016 season
» Essendon doping saga: Full list of players to miss 2016 AFL season
» Should Jobe Watson be stripped of his Brownlow Medal
» Potential top-up Bombers: Could Kelly, Stokes or Lake return?
» Essendon players guilty: Social media reaction
» CAS’s verdict means everyone loses
Instead, the real victims of this suspension are by and large players, coaches and fans who never had anything to do with the supplement scandal in the first place.
Take the Western Bulldogs. Last season they shocked the footy world with their rags to riches climb up the ladder.
With an electric forward line of Jake Stringer, Stewart Crameri and Tory Dickson, the Doggies ran rings around their slower opponents and became one of the most entertaining teams to watch. Crameri left Essendon the very same year the scandal erupted, but now his young teammates have to go through 2016 without his presence on the field, or his invaluable guidance off it.
Jake Carlisle needed an escape from the insufferable drama that was dogging his young career, and St Kilda were happy to pay a high price to give him a lifeline. Carlisle certainly put himself on the back foot with a personal drugs scandal in the offseason, but the CAS has now punished St Kilda’s young defenders for another club’s woeful governance.
Angus Monfries and Paddy Ryder – the latter very publicly – fled the mismanagement and secrecy of the Bombers to start new football lives at Port Adelaide. Now the Power will have their attempted surge back up the ladder hindered by the actions of another club three years ago.
Melbourne don’t get Jake Melksham’s young talent for a full year for something they didn’t do.
Greater Western Sydney lose an assistant coach, in Mark McVeigh, for a controversy they had no involvement in.
And while not all the former Bombers of the ‘Essendon 34’ are quite so prominent, many of them have moved on to play or coach in state and local competitions around the country. They too will miss 2016 in its entirety. Why should the ineptitude of a major club see grassroots organisations suffer?
And what about the current Essendon list?
There are 27 players on Essendon’s list who weren’t present at the time of the scandal and haven’t been suspended. The entire coaching panel, bar VFL coach Matthew Egan, has moved on since 2012. That entire group, who did nothing wrong and had no involvement in the doping scandal whatsoever, must now suffer through what will surely be a miserable, wooden-spoon campaign.
Flash back to 2013, and the punishments handed out at the time by the AFL were spot on.
Essendon absolutely deserved to be fined the whopping sum of money they were for their recklessness. Essendon absolutely deserved to be removed from the finals for the controversy they’d generated.
Maybe, if the 34 had been suspended for the 2013 season it would have been more justifiable.
But to hand out 12-month bans after three years of steep penalties and deep personal anguish for all involved, WADA and the CAS have missed the mark.
Not only is it a huge kick in the guts for the 34 players who have already been through so much, but now the players, coaches and fans of five other AFL teams – and countless local clubs – have been dragged into the scandal as well.
Nobody wanted that.