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With all the hubbub about drugs in sport, the AFL is seeking to reverse its current stance of mollycoddling drug abusers, which currently sees players given an astounding three warnings before any form of meaningful penalty is levied, by retrospectively removing the four points a club receives for a home and away victory.
Or, where a player has tested positive on grand final day, they can be stripped of the actual premiership they contributed to.
The only time in recorded AFL history a drug cheat has cost their club premiership points was in 1997, when Richmond’s Justin Charles tested positive to steroids and cost the Tigers several games, although this punishment actually occurred on the day through Charles’ insipid performances rather than as a retrospective punishment for Charles’ performance actually winning the Tigers a match.
Implementing a policy like this raises a number of questions such as how many players from the one team need to test positive on the one day for a club to lose points, how well does a positive player have to have played for their performance to be considered to have won their club the match, and will this policy be applied retrospectively to all 75 West Coast victories between 2002 and 2007 or just key finals games in 2005 and 2006?
The AFL confirmed that under its mini dictatorship created through a seemingly unending list of bylaws and regulations which basically give it the right to do whatever it bloody well wants, it would now have the ability to change the result of matches, including finals, if it believes the results have been affected by drug abuse.
This adds to four the number of ways the results of a match can be unfairly altered along with organised crime identities bribing umpires and players through threats of violence, gambling syndicates paying off the most influential players to play below their usual standard, or Matthew Knights deciding to include the woeful Jason Laycock in the Essendon side, thereby guaranteeing the opposition the four points.
Overpaid AFL slug Andrew Demtriou, a man who presumably wipes his mouth after each and every one of his fourteen daily meals with $100 notes, said the AFL commission would act to strip clubs of points where it was shown a player later testing positive had played an “influential role” in the victory through that wonderful clause in the AFL constitution that gives the league the right to do whatever it pleases if a player “brings the game into disrepute”.
This fascist clause gives the league the ability to dispense punishments for incidents it believes “bring the game into disrepute,” which is a very grey area in terms of how one defines an act that “brings the game into disrepute”.
Obvious examples include players testing positive for recreational or performance-enhancing drugs, players engaging in lewd Mad Monday celebrations that involve the wearing of a sex toy in public, and Ross Lyon and Paul Roos instructing their clubs to play with 15 men behind the ball to turn every match into a 51-49 bore-fest.
Where this leaves the one event that tarnishes the league’s image more than any other, the annual player’s review on the grand final edition of The Footy Show, is uncertain.
Demetriou explained how the new rule would work. “If more than one player at one club tests positive to performance-enhancing drugs the league can act under rule 18 of the anti-doping code. The commission has the power to overturn the result of matches, fine the club, dock premiership points or even suspend the club.”
This rule obviously would’ve come in handy two years ago when the only person allegedly not on the fizz at West Coast was allegedly coach John Worsfold, and given he’s allegedly a qualified pharmacist, it’s safe to allegedly presume he was allegedly dispensing alleged prescriptions with no alleged questions asked to players allegedly on the weekend.
However, Demetriou also confirmed that the league has the power to act even if only one player from a team tests positive. How this principle is to be applied is still to be officially decided but an effective rule would be to analyse how the match would’ve turned out had the offending player not played at all.
Based on this analysis Sydney and West Coast would swap their 2005 and 2006 premierships if it’s ever proven that Leo Barry and Ben Cousins were chowing down on some horse chaff pre-game in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
Most interesting is this hypothetical situation whereby Geelong’s Harry Taylor and James Kelly were found to have an unhealthy mix of uppers and downers in their system from this year’s finale.
Given that Taylor’s pathetic third quarter fumble led directly to the Stuart Dew goal that changed the momentum of the match irreversibly, and that Kelly’s soft performance throughout the game set the trend for several of the other Cats to follow, it’s safe to say Geelong would have won that match had Taylor and Kelly not played, resulting in the perverse situation where penalising the two players would actually hand the Cats the flag and leave the victorious Hawks empty handed.
If Mark Thompson was smart, the next drinks Taylor and Kelly receive from a trainer on match day will have a strange metallic taste to them.
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