- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The AFL could’ve put the careers of six men in danger on Wednesday, when it announced the latest illicit drug testing results. It could’ve subjected young men, some vulnerable and possibly with serious problems, to the spotlight of the national media.
It could’ve thrown its own players under the bus at a time when they need support rather than uneducated judgement.
Thankfully, though, the AFL didn’t name the six players their illicit drugs policy caught in 2010.
All they released were numbers and data, despite the critics who still maintain the “name and shame” route would be more appropriate.
Yesterday, my Roar colleague Adrian Musolino described the AFL’s policy as “a farcical PR front” and called on the league do adopt a name and shame stance.
I couldn’t help but respectfully disagree with this argument, firstly because of the negative impact on players a name and shame approach would have but primarily because the AFL illicit drug policy would appear to be the antithesis of a PR front.
It must be remembered that most sports in Australia, and indeed the world, do not test for illicit drugs out of competition at all.
The two other sports here that do – rugby league and cricket – do not publish testing results. As a result, these sports manage to avoid the kind of criticism the AFL sets itself up for every year by revealing its results.
These sports avoid headlines like the one that appeared on the back page of yesterday’s Herald Sun, which screamed “Drug Alarm” in big letters.
If the AFL were truly concerned about public relations above all else, they would not subject themselves to this kind of negative attention on an annual basis. In fact, if that was their chief concern, it would be easier not to test at all.
There are unfortunately many misunderstandings when it comes to this issue and it’s worrying that after six years some still fail to grasp two of the most important distinctions that simply must be made when assessing the AFL’s policy. Too often critics fail to properly distinguish between illicit drugs and performance-enhancing drugs, as well as out of competition testing and in-competition testing.
In the case of performance-enhancing drugs or use of drugs in-competition (before or during a game), if a player was caught there would be major repercussions, as there should be. Most likely he’d be kicked out of the game for a period of years.
However, the AFL’s three strikes policy applies to those found to have used illicit drugs – drugs that are not performance enhancing – out of competition. It’s important to make these two distinctions because there’s such a massive difference between the two alternatives. Use of performance-enhancing drugs is cheating, pure and simple.
Thus, it was disappointing that Adrian chose to write that the AFL’s handling of the issue is “no different” to the UCI’s involvement in Lance Armstrong’s alleged (performance-enhancing) drug taking. There was in fact one very important difference between the two cases.
The AFL have chosen to adopt an illicit drug policy that places player welfare as its number one priority, which is exactly how it should be.
They could do as other sports do an bury their heads in the sand – then we wouldn’t be talking about this at all.
They could choose not to go public with the testing results – then either we wouldn’t be talking about this, or people would still have a go at them for not being transparent.
But the AFL have instead chosen (with the support of medical experts) to stick by their policy and, believe it or not, it has worked. The number of positive tests has dropped ten-fold – yes, ten-fold – since the policy’s introduction in 2005, despite three and a half times the number of tests as back then.
Now, even Major League Baseball and the NFL are reportedly looking to the AFL for guidance on this issue.
Sure, the AFL’s policy sets the league up as an easy target. But the alternatives – name and shame, doing nothing – simply don’t compare.
Hopefully one day the league will get the credit it deserves for the stance it has adopted.