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The decision by WADA to refer the Essendon case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport should be roundly endorsed by every sports loving Aussie (maybe with the exception of one-eyed Essendon fans).
We can’t let fatigue with the case be a reason to no longer pursue the right outcome.
Essendon have brought nothing but shame to our game and taken it down a route no one wants to see it going.
As a cycling fan, I see so many parallels to cycling in the late 1990s and early 2000s and quite frankly I think the AFL have missed the opportunity to make a definitive statement that they will not stand for this.
Cycling’s governing body the UCI was unwilling to expose its Golden Boy, Lance Armstrong, given the extraordinary commercial and sponsorship interest he was generating in the sport. The AFL is guilty of the same crime here and the long-term damage is real. As a lifelong footy fan, I’m completely disenchanted with the sport as a result.
Much like the EPO-tainted cycling teams of that era, Essendon indulged in a team-sponsored doping program that threw ethics and the welfare of athletes out the window. Remember Essendon felt their transgressions were serious enough to self-report in the first place.
The player group should have stood up and said we won’t stand for this – given everything we know about doping how can they have consented to being injected with a concoction of ‘unknown’ substances? Shame on them for going along with it and not having the courage to stand up against it. The cyclists of the 1990s did the same thing with EPO and it ultimately became systemic throughout the sport.
Let’s step back from the details of the legal process and just reflect on the fact that their captain won the award as the competition’s best player in that season (and has been allowed to keep that Brownlow Medal) fuelled by a concoction of who knows what. Ultimately the players have been cleared because there was no record of what substances they were administered. To the outside observer overseas it leaves our game as a laughing stock.
Well done to WADA for not standing by and letting this light-handed self-administered perversion of justice prevail. I look forward to an impartial decision that doesn’t involve some sort of negotiation with the AFL or Essendon or Paul Little or James Hird.
Cycling star Alberto Contador was initially cleared by the Spanish domestic authorities in his clenbuterol case and the rest of the cycling and sporting world looked on in scorn at the laughable attempt of self-interested parties to administer justice. WADA pursued the same channels through CAS and ultimately Contador was stripped of titles and suspended.
We all know Essendon were systematically doping. Let’s hope justice prevails here and Australian sport can hold its head up on the world stage again.
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