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The ASADA announcement heralded the good guys fighting back, the cheaters being forced out, righteousness prevailing, right? Then why does it leave a nasty taste in my mouth?
Like many of you, my heart sank when Senator Lundy and Minister Clare herded some of Australia’s biggest professional sports codes into a room and grimly announced to the nation that the sports we loved had a tarnished black heart.
Drug taking was rampant, organised crime had infiltrated; the purity of our sport now had a dead possum in its water tank.
I was expecting to see major recriminations and ground shifting punishments. Players rubbed out for life and maybe even joining crooked match-fixing officials in jail, premierships stripped, maybe some clubs folding altogether.
Instead, we had….not a lot. Sandor Earl and Shane Flanagan got sacked, James Hird got a years leave, with pay, and that’s kind of it at this point.
Now this is not to suggest something may not happen, indeed it is very likely something may happen. It is also very likely that the world is going to end at some point, but that mean you don’t look dumb walking around clanging bells chanting in Aramaic about the end of days.
What went wrong?
Was it because they so enthusiastically overstated the extent of the problem? Remember the 150 players possibly under investigation, later revealed to be a vague guestimate by ASADA Chief Aurora Andruska?
The blackest day in sport led us to believe that this was an enormous problem, not just Essendon and Cronulla, which is how it quickly turned out.
Was it just too confusing?
Most of us had never heard of a peptide twelve months ago, and now they were public enemy number one.
To confuse matters further a key player in the whole affair, Stephen Dank, who would doll them out like Minties at a picnic, maintains that these peptides were perfectly legal.
Legal peptides? There are no such thing as legal anabolic steroids but apparently these new ones weren’t all bad, only some of them were.
Was it simply that they went public when they weren’t ready?
NRL fans remember the shock when David Gallop sat down and announced that not only was there a salary cap investigation into the Storm, that the investigation was over, they were guilty and were stripped of two premierships.
This was all revealed to an astonished league world in the space of about twenty minutes! ASADA announced that there was an investigation into crime and drugs and over a year later, they are still on the investigation stage.
Should they have waited until the evidence was in before calling the press conference?
Was it the speed with which it all degenerated into another accursed code war? Football scoffed that it was nothing to do with them, rugby soon joined them, Olympic athletes looked down on stupid footballers not checking what they were taking.
When it settled down to just the AFL and NRL, both codes’ keyboard warriors took pot shots at the other and it all seemed like old ground.
Who has the best atmosphere? The best awards night? The best crime and drugs investigations?
Did you feel it was incredibly unfair on the young footballers?
Blokes following the instructions of a medical professional at their place of employment, suddenly being told they have cheated, and unless they cooperate and dob in their mates they will have a really harsh punishment as opposed to merely a harsh one?
If a quasi-government body rocked into my place of work, and told me they think my employer was cheating, didn’t have any proof but want me to incriminate myself anyway and brand me a massive cheat in the news, I would be as cooperative and helpful as Wade Graham was.
Was it the stain of a bad government spinning the same old tune?
Remember them, the group that made big announcements about controlling our fuel and grocery prices, lowering world temperature, revitalising education and disability funding, only to follow through ineptly each and every time?
Was it weariness of seeing this same mob over promise and under deliver yet again?
Was it related to being frustrated at the general uselessness of drug testing?
Andrew Jennings memorably described drug testing as perfect for finding all the cheats who are poor and stupid.
The poor, using the old drugs because they can’t afford the latest zappers that aren’t being detected, and the stupid, too dopey to follow the simple rules that enable you to escape detection.
For all the money spent on drug tests, and all the annoyance they cause the athletes, they don’t even catch the cheats.
Lance Armstrong doped for over a decade and passed every drug test, Marion Jones passed all of hers as well.
Looking back, I see in the ASADA press conference the faux outrage known only too well to school teachers.
You know the kids are up to something, you want them to stop, so you sit them all down in front of you and wave your arms around while threatening seven shades of hell.
This works great with little kids, but as soon as they reach double digits, the tactic is as useful as raking leaves on a windy day.
Regardless, it has been 12 months since the ASADA investigation became the stinking albatross corpse hanging around the neck of Australian sport.
A curse, yet to be lifted and unlikely to be anytime soon.
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