Jobe Watson no longer has a Brownlow Medal to hang around his neck.
But – on the bright side – he no longer has a monkey on his back. Or a target on his forehead.
Watson was the skipper and stand-out player of the 2012 Essendon team, 34 of whom were hit with one-year doping bans for their roles in the spectacularly ill-conceived supplements program.
That he won the Brownlow Medal in that very season – four votes clear of Richmond’s Trent Cotchin and Hawthorn’s Sam Mitchell – only added to the opprobrium heaped on him in some quarters.
How could an award for the league’s best and fairest player stay with a man who had served a doping ban?
To his credit, Watson did not dodge that tricky question on Friday.
“It has been incredibly distressing for me to have people question my integrity and infer an intention to act against the spirit of the game – a spirit that is intrinsically a part of who I am,” he said.
“The basic principle behind this prestigious award is to honour the fairest and best.
“If there is a question in people’s minds as to whether the 2012 award is tainted, the fairest and best thing to do is to give it back and honour the history that has gone before me.”
Watson and his former and current Essendon teammates remain convinced they did not deserve the one-year suspensions.
Watson took it harder than anyone else.
He spent much of 2016 in New York – as far away as possible from the suffocating AFL bubble – before finally making the decision in September to resume his playing career in red and black in 2017.
Doing so will be much less difficult without constant criticism about why he refused to voluntarily give the medal back.
The AFL Commission gave Watson the chance to plead his case to keep it.
Wisely, the 31-year-old turned them down.
Handing the Brownlow back on his own terms and starting 2017 with a clean slate – or as clean as possible given the murky nature of what has happened at Essendon in the past few years – was the smart play.
And it was the right play.
Aransan
Guest
Liam, the main ramification would be that this saga would drag on for a fifth year. Jobe and Essendon want to move on, giving back the Brownlow helps this to happen. Let us allow Jobe to move on.
Liam O'Neill
Guest
Could there have been all sorts of ramifications and unexpected results if Jobe had decided to keep his Brownlow and take it to a legal court?
Cat
Roar Guru
Liam D
Guest
Don't barrack for them. I just know when people have been shafted. All the info points towards it. You don't barrack for them, so obviously they must be guilty - right ?.
Shane
Guest
Nah, Liam. Most club supporters want to see a fair contest where the hardest workers, the toughest soldiers and the most skilled players test the limits of human will and courage. And then there are Essendon supporters.
Shane
Guest
Derr, Liam. You do realise that is how CASA, WADA and ASADA work? Moreso, so did Jobe, Essendon and the AFL when they signed up to the anti-doping code. No point whinging about getting caught out as a cheat, under rules you should fully understand before attempting to cheat.
northerner
Guest
Liam - do you realize that the presumption of innocence only applies in criminal courts? In civil courts, there is no presumption of either innocence or guilt - just a weighing of probabilities. And the balance in this one is clearly on the side of Essendon running an uncontrolled supplements regimen (heck it was the club that reported it), and of complicity by rather a large number of people in keeping that regimen below the radar.
northerner
Guest
Liam - oh come off it. I have no loyalty to any footie club here - but as an objective observer, I'd have to be a fool to believe that Essendon wasn't running a supplements scheme that got out of control, that the club administration willfully ignored what was going on, as did the coach and the players. And guess what, in the modern world, "plausible deniabilty" only works if the denial is plausible. That so many people could be ignorant of what was going on, ignorant of their own responsibilities to the players, and for the players to be ignorant of their own responsibilities, frankly, beggars belief.
Liam D
Guest
The AFL community is run on club lines, 150 years of hating Essendon will do the trick, they eat what is fed to them.
Liam D
Guest
Cat- do you realise that what you are saying is you need to prove innocence rather than CAS prove guilt. If the witches sink they are innocent, if they float we will burn them.
Cugel
Roar Rookie
He probably feels down.
Birdman
Guest
I (like most of the AFL community) am comfortably satisfied that the Dons are drug cheats and none of your protestations will change that.
bobburra
Guest
I have thought all along that the players,all 34 of them, have wear some some of the blame, as NOT ONE OF THEM RAISED CONCERNS with anybody else,players assoc. AFL, parents. Having said that most of the blame rests with the club, Hird in particular. As far as I am concerned, players have been "put on trial" found guilty, served their penalty, end of story move on, get ready for 2017. As for their "put on trial", on must remember that got got "pinged" not for taking drugs, but for not being able to prove that they didn't, by virtue of not producing up to date paperwork that are required to do. I still think that ALL of the coaches at the time have not been penalised as hard as they should have been for being involved such a program as they did. I do not believe for one minute that the assistants can claim they did not know what was going on. Full credit for the current board taking responsibilty for Watson prediciment, but as you say it's somewhat late.
Cat
Roar Guru
bobburra
Guest
Hird has said it was wrong for Jobe Watson to hand it back. That's a bit rich coming from the bloke who was largely responsible for putting Watson in that position in the first place. There is no end to Hirds' "I have done nothing wrong mantra".
Liam D
Guest
ASADA has claimed there are no records, yet they now claim that people were injected with TB4 at certain times that correspond with 30 drug tests. The form states that players must submit what they took in the previous 7 days, not 8 or 10 or 50. So if they don’t have a schedule of when players were injected, how in the hell do they know that the injections were within the 7 day period. Besides all that of course, they don’t even know if it was indeed TB4, they have no positive tests, no witnesses, no whistleblowers, no players admitting it and no drugs on site, ASADA and WADA haven’t even identified Dank having enough TB4 to inject 30 players and in Watson’s case the TB4 they have verified was outside the time frame for him to be injected. What’s More Dank used TB4 at his clinics legally. Yet we are expected to take CAS seriously.
Redb
Roar Guru
Pumping Dougie must be pumping substances - as per above wrong wrong wrong. Watson did not even take Thymosin Beta. The CAS decision is what you would expect from a kangaroo court. You can do what you like with circumstantial evidence to fit your decision. .
Birdman
Guest
looks like some posters still have the tin foil hats firmly on. Nothing heroic about any of the actions of Essendon and its players - anyone who wants to think of them as drug cheats will be completely free to do so as they have been damned as such by the highest authority in world sport.
Liam D
Guest
Wrong, wrong, wrong. No evidence.
Aransan
Guest
Dougie, what you are saying is that he couldn't prove he was innocent. He does bear some responsibility for allowing himself to be put in that position, the club bears a much greater responsibility for allowing it to happen. Please give him credit for returning the medal, this saga has gone on long enough.