AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou’s attitude to clubs employing their own integrity officers speaks of a man looking to absolve his own organisation of responsibility.
During the airing of Channel Seven’s Drugs in Footy Summit on Thursday night, Demetriou called on clubs to “minimise the risk” and apply their own in-house measures to complement the AFL’s integrity unit.
Now, this isn’t one of the countless Demetriou-bashing articles that flood the web. The AFL’s top job is not and should not be a popularity contest, and the amount of criticism levelled at Demetriou does not detract from the way he has excelled as AFL CEO.
Demetriou and the AFL should even be applauded for their proactive stance in response to the Australian Crime Commission report into performance-enhancing and illicit drugs and other illegal activities.
Which makes Demetriou’s request to clubs to help police cheating all the more confusing.
The mess that Essendon currently finds itself in might not be due to institutional cheating from each and every person associated with the club. But should they be found to have broken the rules, it will be because of the actions of one or more employees entrusted by the club to work within the laws of the game.
As we have seen both in Australia and overseas, when the stakes are as high as they are in contemporary professional sport, there will be cases where administrators and coaches stop at nothing to achieve success.
Demetriou needs to look no further back than a decade ago, when John Elliott nearly brought down the Carlton Football Club.
There’s Brian Waldron and the Melbourne Storm. The Canterbury Bulldogs. The New Orleans Saints and their NFL ‘Bountygate’ scandal. There’s no shortage of recent examples.
Theoretically, an integrity officer should stamp the possibility of this out.
But there is nothing to ensure that an integrity officer would be unaffected by the temptation to help the club achieve success, even via illegitimate means. Unlikely, perhaps, but not impossible.
During what could be the most damaging scandal to hit the AFL, strong and authoritative leadership is a must.
Demetriou should be ensuring that even the remotest of possibilities of illegal activity is eliminated, and to do that he must not decentralise power when it comes to the integrity of the competition.
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