Is Watson on par with Powell and Gay?

If you stop and think about it, the circumstances which have landed two of the world’s elite sprinters in controversy this week are eerily similar to what is faced by players from Essendon and Jobe Watson in particular.

You would think these similarities, which have a direct relevance to our game, might have drawn some attention from the AFL media. I may have missed it, but I haven’t seen heard or read anything which has compared the two scenarios. I believe they do warrant scrutiny.

First, let’s take a look at the recent comments from Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay.

On his official website Powell said: “I will confirm that a sample I gave at the National Trials in June earlier this year has returned ‘adverse findings’. The substance oxilofrine (methylsynephrine) was found, which is considered by the authorities to be a banned stimulant.”

That’s not good for Asafa. Of course, as any athlete in this situation usually does, he is at pains to defend his integrity. “I have never knowingly or willfully taken any supplements or substances that break any rules. I am not now—nor have I ever been—a cheat,” he added.

Sadly, by returning a positive test Powell is, by definition, a cheat. Of course, he has every right to try and clear his name. I’ve got nothing against the guy and for the good of his sport I really do hope there is a reasonable explanation.

Has Powell been set up? He doesn’t say as much, but he did say this in his statement: “My team has launched an internal investigation and we are cooperating with the relevant agencies and law enforcement authorities to discover how the substance got in my system. I assure you that we will find out how this substance passed our rigorous internal checks and balances and design systems to make sure it never happens again.”

Gay, for his part, is keeping his powder dry on his official website. We don’t know yet what substance Gay is alleged to have taken, but we do know he has returned a positive test to a banned substance and has withdrawn from the forthcoming world championships while his ‘B’ sample is tested.

Gay has also been quoted as saying: “I don’t have a sabotage story. I don’t have any lies. I don’t have anything to say to make this seem like it was a mistake or it was on USADA’s hands, someone playing games. I don’t have any of those stories. I basically put my trust in someone and I was let down.”

And there it is, he put his trust in someone and was let down. Sound familiar?

“My understanding after it being given through [club doctor] Bruce Reid and the club is that I was receiving AOD,” said Jobe Watson in his watershed interview with Fox Footy’s On the Couch. “The understanding we had through the advice we got and from the medical doctor at the football club was that it [AOD-9604] was a legal substance.”

Watson went on to say he doesn’t have any feelings of guilt. But how can he hold this position? It’s true it hasn’t been established as absolute fact that AOD-9604 was actually administered as per the instruction on the consent form that Watson and his teammates signed.

But, for the purposes of this comparison between the world of athletics and the AFL, let’s take Watson’s comments at face value and assume if it looks like a lab rat and smells like a lab rat then it’s probably a lab rat.

In essence Watson is saying, “I put my trust in someone else, was given the all-clear by the people I bestowed my trust in that the supplements were legal and as a result I cannot be guilty.”

Imagine if it was a simple as that for Ben Johnson. Or Marion Jones. Or even the new poster boy for cheating, Lance Armstrong.

Back to AOD-9604 for a moment, WADA issued a clarifying statement in April that said, “AOD-9604 is a substance still under pre-clinical and clinical development and has not been approved for therapeutic use by any government health authority in the world.”

That means it falls under the WADA Code’s S.0 catch-all clause and until that changes AOD-9604 is “prohibited at all times”.

So, here we have two elite sprinters with high profiles from the athletics world claiming they unwittingly took banned substances and one high-profile AFL player admitting to a similar offence.

Let’s compare the reactions of all three then.

Asafa Powell: “I accept the consequences that come with this finding—after all there is only one Asafa Powell. My fault here however is not cheating but instead not being more vigilant.”

Tyson Gay: “I will take whatever punishment I get like a man. I do realise and respect what I put in my body and it is my responsibility.”

Jobe Watson: “It’s my belief that we have done nothing wrong. I don’t have any feeling of guilt. All I want is the truth to come out. It’s not impacting on me. It’s not a cloud that’s hanging over me.”

Is Watson’s claim of innocence and apparent refusal to accept his strict liability as a professional athlete due to disbelief, denial, ignorance or just plain stupidity?

Remember, the WADA Code, to which all AFL players are bound by, states: “It is each athlete’s personal duty to ensure that no prohibited substance enters his or her body.”

I ask, why isn’t there anyone in the mainstream AFL media highlighting this discrepancy in standards between Powell and Gay, who have acknowledged their personal responsibility, and the hitherto denials of personal responsibility from Watson?

Worse, the highest office in the land holds this position of ignoring personal responsibility as far as players go. Matt Finnis, AFLPA CEO, said: “We must ensure that ultimate culpability resides with those who are most responsible.

“From the moment they come into the game, the players are told to put their trust and confidence in the experts, the medical advisors and the fitness staff in relation to any type of supplements they’re going to take.”

Well, Matt, if that is genuinely the case, then maybe your organsiation has some answering to do. At the very least pay some attention to Article 2.1.1 of the WADA Code.

Why are we expected to believe the responsibilities of the players from the Essendon Football Club, and by extension all players in the AFL, are somehow different to every other professional athlete in world sport?

And why is our footy media so inward looking that it just accepts the double standards we are witnessing, seemingly for no other reason than Jobe is supposed to be a good bloke and it just can’t be that he is guilty?

Remember, Jobe Watson also said: “The experience of having that many injections was not something I had experienced in AFL football before.”

Would these same scribes and television pundits afford the same luxuries to Powell or Gay if they made a similar admission to Watson? What if current Tour de France leader Chris Froome was interviewed this week and said he thought he was injected with a substance he was told was legal but is in fact banned. Do you think he’d be getting the free ride enjoyed by Watson?

It’s bad enough that Essendon has put itself in a situation that stinks to high heaven. And yet, I find myself thinking the response and lack of genuine scrutiny from those who owe the game their living stinks even more.

This is not about singling out Jobe Watson or the Essendon Football Club. It’s way more important than that. They say that no individual is bigger than the club. Equally, no club is bigger than the game itself.

Is anyone portraying Asafa Powell or Tyson Gay as a victim? Of course not.

But here in the AFL, when the Perth crowd booed Jobe Watson after his frank admissions, it was the crowd who was criticised and not the professional athlete who said he was injected with a banned substance. No, he was portrayed by far too many in the footy media as an innocent victim. Listening to it on the radio and television was bad enough, writing it down here, well, it’s just laughable.

Perhaps such an outcome shouldn’t be a surprise in an industry that can’t help but be inward looking do to the indigenous nature of the AFL.

Perhaps I shouldn’t expect the media, among others, to put the integrity of the game ahead of the reputation of an individual or a club. But I do.