In a landmark week for Australian sport, the release of the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) report into organised crime and performance enhancing drugs has implicated an unknown number of sports, teams and athletes.
The ACC report focused on the ‘two major sporting codes’ but was wide spread and left a cloud over the entire Australian sporting landscape.
This announcement has finally lifted the wool from the eyes of sports fans in Australia, to understand that athletes and clubs face the same threats as do the rest of the sporting world.
And this is nothing new, athletics in the 80s and then cycling in the 90s had to confront their sins and ensure mechanisms were put in place to help eradicate and deter wrongdoers.
These threats live on, and like any section of society some get lucky, but over time history tells us they will be caught.
It’s the wake-up call professional sport in Australia needed.
The Australian Football League (AFL) has protected its brand with an iron fist and that is reflective of its decision making and commentary over the past decade.
In 2005 the AFL reluctantly signed up to the World Anti-Doping Agency charter. This only came about through federal government pressure, with the prospect of funding cuts forcing their hand.
The question has been raised this week – have sporting code ‘brands’ been tarnished?
In 2010 entertainment lawyer Wayne Covell complied a rich list of Australian sporting brands, AFL clubs making up eight of the top ten.
http://www.waynecovell.com/News.htm
No doubt this net worth has risen in past two seasons, and for the number one ranked club, Collingwood Football Club, it’s estimated to have a self worth of $263m. Underlying its status as Australia’s financial sporting power it reported a $7.83m profit in 2012.
The protection of not only the AFL but its clubs brand and worth has been managed by its own governance and similarly for the NRL they are now at the mercy of the ACC and the Australian Anti Doping Authority (ASADA) investigation that has now commenced.
This for the first time has the AFL and NRL on the back foot. They were dealing with information they either knew about and didn’t act on or were seeing for the first time and found themselves in position that rendered them powerless.
Powerless refers to their own inability to manage the situation internally. Forced to implement a range of new processes and thrown vast amount of money to increase the capability of ‘integrity units’ to confront a problem they believed they were on top of and leading the way.
Both codes have come out strong and its position or as quoted ‘the line drawn in the sand’, is to shake up their sports and remove the parasites that have infiltrated their game and bring the belief back to the fans and wider sporting family.
It has been a black day in Australian sport and only the naive would think that sport in this country was not a threat from illegal activities that have infiltrated the rest of the sporting world.
With a strong economy, a massive market of elite sports, the possibilities for drugs, criminals, illegal betting and corruption are high and diverse.
There is no place for this in sport and those who are found to be doing wrong will be weeded out.
It is only a matter of time, and time is something the public will have deal with, due to complexity of the issues and the ACC and ASADA’s involvement.
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