Ok, let’s cut to the chase: A politician has come out saying AFL clubs are secretly testing players for illicit substances and, if the results are positive, players are pulled in the days before a game day under the guise of injury.

This is so those players don’t get positive drug tests on match day, which would result in long-term bans from the game.

The AFL has been rocked by allegations raised by independent MP Andrew Wilkie. Credit: Artwork: Marija Ercegovac

By independent MP Andrew Wilkie’s account, which he aired in parliament on Tuesday night, the practice of covering up illegal drug use with the excuse of a fake injury is so commonplace within the AFL it’s essentially an open secret. But that’s just not true.

At best, Wilkie’s claim is a slightly more fleshed-out version of what I heard on the grapevine back when I was playing AFL professionally, which was along the lines of: “So and so is a high-functioning drug addict, which means that they can get as many strikes as they want without actually getting strikes.”

Aside from those occasional rumours, I wasn’t aware this was the operating model during my career and I never directly saw it take place. It seems like something you’d have to know how to seek out, either through personal experience, having had welfare managers and/or psychologists discuss it with you, or having raised it because you were worried about the risk of drugs still being in your system.

And as The Age’s Jake Niall wrote following Wilkie’s comments, “this masthead cannot confirm a specific example in which a player who was falsely said to have a hamstring injury or similar was really on a drug-related absence”.

What seems to be the major sticking point in this story, as with every other drug scandal that relates to the AFL, is the feeling that we (the public) have been lied to by the powers that be. Allegations like this rob us of the ability to kid ourselves that coaches are completely naive to the situation, or believe that endlessly rehashed story that every time a player is caught red-handed it’s just a one-off incident.

If a player pulled out with a last-minute injury and then rocked up to the club on Monday, the coach would be having a conversation with them about what happened. If they had a sore hammy and weren’t seen to be icing it, then yeah, it’s pretty obvious something’s afoot. But this level of subterfuge arguably requires a level of acting above what most AFL players are capable of. On some level, coaches, teammates and team staff would know if and when this was happening.

QOSHE - Think AFL drug cover-ups are common? Sorry to disappoint, but they’re not - Brandon Jack
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Think AFL drug cover-ups are common? Sorry to disappoint, but they’re not

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28.03.2024

Ok, let’s cut to the chase: A politician has come out saying AFL clubs are secretly testing players for illicit substances and, if the results are positive, players are pulled in the days before a game day under the guise of injury.

This is so those players don’t get positive drug tests on match day, which would result in long-term bans from the game.

The AFL has been rocked by allegations raised by independent MP Andrew Wilkie. Credit: Artwork: Marija Ercegovac

By independent MP Andrew Wilkie’s account, which he aired in parliament on Tuesday night, the practice of covering up illegal drug use with the excuse of a fake........

© The Sydney Morning Herald


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