The Switkowski report is out, and no heads have been called for. While broad statements have been made about who should have been responsible for what, and what should and should not happen in the future at AFL clubs in relation to supplements and sports science research, there is no blood on the floor, no scalps for the media, no heads on a spike carried around by a rabid supporter base like the end of That Scottish Play.

While the first few non-events are matters for the current Essendon board, the last one isn’t. The reason why there is no uproar from a disenchanted supporter base is because there is no disenchanted supporter base.

Almost to a member, the Essendon faithful have fallen in behind their board, their coach, and their playing group. On the one hand, it’s been quite remarkable to see the solidarity the Essendon family have shown, particularly the playing group, who are undefeated after six games and appear to be genuine premiership contenders.

On the other hand, considering what Essendon are accused of, isn’t a little troubling that no one is making too much noise about perhaps mounting a challenge to the current board? Wouldn’t this sort of “internal ruction” be the usual course of events when a scandal of this magnitude surrounds a club and its board?

Considering the responsibility the board should carry for their part in this entire sorry saga, you would have thought that there was a possibility of a group of high-profile supporters, such as the former Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, calling for a spill of positions on the board at the next Annual General Meeting. Not so.

Maybe I’m not reading the right papers or looking in the right places, but it would seem that at the most basic level, something happened at the Essendon Football Club that should not have happened, and even the extract from the Switkowski report confirmed that. They hired a bloke as a sports scientist who wasn’t accredited, and for whom they checked no references. That is a failure of process and structure at the club, for which the board is ultimately responsible. Yet Bomber fans seem happy to let the board continue.

Yesterday David Evans declared that he will vacate his position at the AGM at the end of the year, and will re-contest the presidency of the club. It will be interesting, and perhaps educational, to see if anyone else nominates for the job.

What worries this correspondent is that this silence equates to acceptance and even approval of what has happened at Essendon in the last eighteen months. Essendon already has runs on the board with trying to stretch and bend the rules as they relate to the salary cap, although those days are well behind them. Supporters raised on premierships between 1984 and 2000 have been starved of success recently, and may support a “whatever it takes” attitude. Hey, it was even their membership motto for 2013.

So the football world waits for the next development in this story, and we hope it provides more illumination of the attitude of the Essendon Football Club. Maybe we shouldn’t hold our breath.

You’ve read it all this week following Friday’s astonishing comeback by Essendon in Perth against the AFL’s own version of a Boa Constrictor, the Fremantle Dockers. It was a tough week for those at Windy Hill, and they were able to deal with the adversity and produce a remarkable performance.

You know what? I’m sick of reading stuff like that in that context. And not just because of my bordering-on-pathological distaste for anything associated with the Essendon Footy Club.

A number of the players have talked about what they went through last week, and you could be confused into thinking you were talking to a victim, or someone who suffered some misfortune for which they had no control over. And this is simply not true – the adversity the Essendon Football Club finds itself in it entirely the creation of the Essendon Football Club.

Without getting into the nitty gritty of their problems, they hired a unaccredited sports scientist without a background check and then followed his instruction, even when they were contrary to the instructions of the club doctor, a man with decades of practical experience and a degree in his field.

By that is beside my point. My point is more and more, sporting people talk about going through adversity without even acknowledging they were the sole authors of their adversity.

Take Dane Swan, who this week plays his 200th game for Collingwood. As is usual for a big milestone, he got a profile piece in The Age today on his journey through the sometimes “horrible world” of being an AFL footballer.

Swan was nearly delisted in 2005. Here’s how he describes the time:

“‘I got into a little bit of trouble off the field, and that’s a negative in one way, but I think that was probably the thing that really kick-started my career.”

Well, I’m glad it only took getting three-quarters cut with some mates and beating the living suitcase out of a cleaner at Federation Square to turn his football around.

Sporting stars live in a different world now, where a psychology has been developed in order to assist players to deal with difficult times and keep performing no matter what happens. They can compartmentalise aspects of their lives, except when connecting them can lead to even greater levels of performance. Unfortunately, it leads to selfish statements like Swan’s one above. Something that was not just a negative, but a criminal action, can be seen as the start of something much more positive than the player deserved, which may very well just have been a short stint in prison.

It also takes away from real moments of adversity, such as the difficulties some players have gone through with family members suffering illnesses.

So, I don’t want to hear how hard it was for Swan, because it was probably harder for the other bloke, who doesn’t have a lucrative career to fall back on.

I don’t want to hear how hard it was for Tiger Woods, a man worth many tens of millions of dollars, when his marriage broke up solely because of his behaviour.

And I don’t want to hear how hard a week it was for Essendon, because it would not have been so hard if only they had behaved differently.

BigFooty members, 112 in all, voted for the Top 50 AFL players.

This was based on a mix of predicted and current form.

The full list, with commentary on each player and member discussion: http://bit.ly/BFTop50-2013

1. Gary Ablett (Gold Coast)
2. Lance Franklin (Hawthorn)
3. Scott Pendlebury (Collingwood)
4. Jobe Watson (Essendon)
5. Dane Swan (Collingwood)
6. Trent Cotchin (Richmond)
7. Josh P Kennedy (Sydney)
8. Joel Selwood (Geelong)
9. Sam Mitchell (Hawthorn)
10. Patrick Dangerfield (Adelaide)
11. Marc Murphy (Carlton)
12. Dean Cox (West Coast)
13. Matthew Pavlich (Fremantle)
14. Dayne Beams (Collingwood)
15. Scott Thompson (Adelaide)
16. Tom Hawkins (Geelong)
17. Taylor Walker (Adelaide)
18. Brett Deledio (Richmond)
19. Nathan Fyfe (Fremantle)
20. Chris Judd (Carlton)
21. Andrew Swallow (North Melbourne)
22. Travis Cloke (Collingwood)
23. Jack Riewoldt (Richmond)
24. Darren Glass (West Coast)
25. Nic Naitanui (West Coast)
26. Kieren Jack (Sydney)
27. Adam Goodes (Sydney)
28. Ted Richards (Sydney)
29. Matthew Boyd (Western Bulldogs)
30. Ryan O’Keefe (Sydney)
31. Luke McPharlin (Fremantle)
32. Harry Taylor (Geelong)
33. Steve Johnson (Geelong)
34. Ryan Griffen (Western Bulldogs)
35. Lenny Hayes (St Kilda)
36. Brendon Goddard (Essendon)
37. David Mundy (Fremantle)
38. Aaron Sandilands (Fremantle)
39. Bryce Gibbs (Carlton)
40. Jimmy Bartel (Geelong)
41. Nick Dal Santo (St Kilda)
42. Beau Waters (West Coast)
43. Sam Jacobs (Adelaide)
44. Jarryd Roughead (Hawthorn)
45. Josh J Kennedy (West Coast)
46. Tom Rockliff (Brisbane)
47. Daniel Rich (Brisbane)
48. Stephen Milne (St Kilda)
49. Jack Redden (Brisbane)
50. Matt Priddis (West Coast)

According to the punditry, everyone will do better in 2013.

This rather extraordinary exercise in groupthink has occurred holistically but, basically, everyone seems to be suggesting this year is the most difficult to pick the eight finalists, how everyone is improved in 2012, all the while essentially picking the same final eight, the next four, and the last six.

For some reason, whether it be a disengagement from the football mainstream, and newly found streak of rebellion, or just a desire to be different from everyone else, I can only think of reasons why every team will struggle this year. So permit me this counterpoint, this minority report, on what will happen in 2013 – the reasons any and every team will not perform as well as in 2012.

Adelaide

Main reason: everyone is talking up Tex Walker this off-season, but I can see a slide from him purely because of the absence of Kurt Tippett. Suddenly Walker will be getting the best defender instead of the second-best, and he’ll have to deal with that effectively for Adelaide to traverse their way through a much tougher fixture in 2013 than the one they enjoyed in 2012.

When I think of Walker this year, I always seem to think of Lance Whitnall after Aaron Hamill left Carlton – he was never anywhere near as productive.

Brisbane

Main reason: They exceeded expectation last year, and this year no one will take them nearly as lightly. Jonathan Brown is another year older, and the Lions haven’t yet shed their reliance on him to kick a winning score.

(You can tell my heart really isn’t in this one – I like Brisbane to impress this year.)

Carlton

Mick Malthouse doesn’t play. They haven’t addressed any area of on-field need, such as tall defender or reliable tall forward. They’ve won one final since 2001.

Collingwood

They’ve been up for a while. Dane Swan could be a massive destruction, and he, Darren Jolly and Nick Maxwell are getting on in footballing years. And Jolly’s replacement is the positively youthful Ben Hudson.

Essendon

See 2012-13 pre-season. That and even with the recruitment of Brendon Goddard, they still lack real midfield depth, quality, proven small forwards, and reliable small defenders.

Fremantle

Pavlich a year older. The propensity of Ross Lyon-coached teams to fall back into timid football that produces low scoring. And they’re Freo – they’ve never won anything.

Geelong

Father time must catch up with these guys, right? And possibly, their best ruck option is a steeplechaser. Can’t play Hawthorn every week.

Gold Coast

Perhaps those youngsters won’t be as good as anyone thinks? Still lack reliable key position players at either end.

Greater Western Sydney

See Gold Coast Year Two.

Hawthorn

These guys are done – I’m putting my neck out. They’re not young, and were in a winning position late in a Grand Final (the year after being in a winning position late in a Preliminary Final) and lost it. And with Clinton Young gone and Matt Suckling done for the season, they lack outside class.

Melbourne

I know that the natural way of things is for a team that has been down so long and has rebuilt so fundamentally to eventually start to climb the ladder, but seriously, where is the improvement going to come from? They certainly added some mature depth, but Byrnes, Dawes and Rodan are not about to set the footy world on fire. Those are three spots that could have gone to youngsters. Nothing excites me about these guys, nothing, and after everything, they’re still Melbourne.

North Melbourne

Like the Crows, their 2012 fixture was a hell of a lot easier than their 2013 one promises to be. They now have a target on their backs, and one of their spots on the list was reserved for a old man who can’t play until Round 7.

Port Adelaide

A basketcase with no fans, no money and no hope. President lives in another state. A horde of mature players walked out on the club last year, to be replaced by Angus Monfries. Read that last sentence again.

Richmond

They are Richmond. Good teams always progress and make finals ahead of schedule. For examples of this, see St Kilda & Geelong in 2004, Hawthorn in 2007, and West Coast in 2011. I’m expecting a quintessentially “Richmond” performance from the Tigers this year.

St Kilda

Surely the club which has won more wooden spoons that any other will finally revert to type in 2013? Goddard’s gone, their quality players are ancient, and their youth is uninspiring or playing for West Coast. And in the off-season, Lenny Hayes had one of his hearts removed.

Sydney

They won the premiership in 2012, and history advises that they probably won’t do it again in 2013. By definition, a slide.

Western Bulldogs

With their only appointed leader out for a month, not only are the Western Bulldogs looking a good candidate for last spot this year, we have no idea who will even be their captain this weekend. They look like St Kilda without the class.

West Coast

In the modern footy world, an uninterrupted pre-season almost takes precedence over any other one factor as the biggest determinant of success in any given year. With so many players hurt through the first few months of 2013, perhaps most pundits faith in the Eagles is just a little bit premature? Also Cox, Glass and Embley all must be nearing their final decline.

For posterity, and to ensure their is some sort of written record of how much of a bad judge I am, here is my ladder for 2013:

Sydney
Fremantle
West Coast
Collingwood
Hawthorn
North Melbourne
St Kilda
Brisbane
Geelong
Adelaide
Carlton
Richmond
Essendon
Gold Coast
Melbourne
Port Adelaide
Greater Western Sydney
Western Bulldogs

Geelong did a strange thing in the footy world today. They were honest.

While the AFL and Melbourne continued to spin around the “not tanking but fined and suspended” debacle, and Essendon briefed journos that ASADA turning up to tell players there was a loophole they might yet squeeze through as a “good thing”, Geelong addressed one of the most important issues in the game, that of the growing inequality between rich and poor clubs and how league addresses it, head on. And they did it publicly.

Early in the afternoon, Geelong put the following document, entitled Geelong Cats Response To AFL On Equalisation (attributed to CEO Brian Cook and President Colin Carter) on their website. Some hours later the AFL put their own take on it – Cats call for salary cap re-think. For mine this is a very disingenuous take (from the AFL? Heaven forfend!) because contained in the document are far more interesting and telling observations about the state of the modern football political economy than merely one of the recommendations towards the back.

In this light, I’ve picked out my top eight points from the Geelong response and added some of my own take on each one. My view is by no means right, it is not pretending to be anything other than opinion. The words that really count are those of Cook and Carter.

As well, from an ‘equalisation perspective’ we believe that the strategy was flawed. Allocating funds to the most wealthy clubs was unnecessary but, more importantly, fuelled football inflation and actually increased the spending gap between rich and poor clubs

Having issued the perfectly reasonable but eminently expected complaint that they got a raw deal from the Club Future Fund distribution, Cook and Carter leap straight for the jugular early on page one with this gem. And they are right.

You don’t close inequality by giving poor clubs $10 and then rich clubs $2 and then claiming that with their extra $10 the poor clubs are $10 better off than they were.

No, in reality the poor clubs are only $8 better off. And, as the Cats explain in detail, a rich club is able to multiply every dollar it gets far more effectively than a poor club, so the “benefit” is lessened even further. This for mine is the salient point of the whole document. Everything else leads from it.

We also say that ‘supporter base’ drives sponsorship because decision-makers in firms will be influenced by their club allegiances.

Another fascinating admission and one that bears the voice of experience. Essentially, they are saying that the more supporters you have, the more likelihood some of those supporters will, instead of making rational business decisions, actually spend company/business money with their hearts. We all know this is true at a fundamental level – look at Pratt and Carlton for but one example – but to see it laid out in black and white is refreshing.

We also accept that ‘fixture’ and ‘stadium returns’ are important influences on revenue potential. We welcome the AFL’s acknowledgement that smaller clubs are being disadvantaged because of the AFL strategy to maximise attendances and TV audiences.

Heartening. This view is just the whinging of “small clubs that won’t help themselves”, it is the simple reality of how footy is governed.

The financial gap between clubs is driven by the revenue raised by the richest teams. They set the cost benchmarks and smaller clubs go broke trying to keep up.

Again, shouldn’t be that difficult a concept to grasp but one that seems to elude so many. Seeing as the best administrator in the game has put his name to that sentiment, I think we can now accept it as gospel.

If variable pricing is introduced to selected ‘blockbuster’ games and the additional revenues shared with other teams and, in particular, allocated to smaller teams, the equalisation objectives would be met

WAHEY! Cooky waves the hammer and sickle, loads the AK and charges that great citadel of late capitalist footy theory, the ANZAC Day game. You want the ANZAC Day game and all the associated benefits it brings, then you have to share the benefits. They don’t go into enough detail here as to what “variable pricing” could entail, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where he is going. This would put your average Bomber fan in quite the pickle – would they still go to the ANZAC day game if they knew North or the Dogs were directly benefiting? Can they explain why other teams shouldn’t benefit if they are shut out of the time-slot?

Of course, good and bad management makes a difference but not enough to overcome entrenched inequalities. Even wealthy clubs have had periods of very bad management – but they can dig their way out of trouble because of the size of their supporter base.

In two short sentences, Cook and Carter “pwn” hundreds of big club supporting Internet trolls with the warhammer of decades of experience at the footy coalface.

There is little evidence that the relative size of supporter bases has moved much between clubs over the last 50 years. A few clubs may have lost a little ground after decades of poor performance and arguably only one club has gained due to a level of sustained on-field success 30 years ago that cannot be repeated.

Another fascinating point from the Cat hierarchy. I’m not sure how much I agree with this: surely the club they refer to is Hawthorn and I dispute that cannot be repeated. North’s surging membership numbers, which should take it into the middle bracket of Melbourne teams membership wise in the next two years, can clearly be traced back to the Carey Generation coming of age. Still, it is a point well made and one worth bearing in mind.

There is even evidence that some smaller clubs have done a relatively better job than some of the larger clubs – such as converting a higher proportion of their supporters to members and often getting a higher yield per member. As well, some of the smaller clubs have achieved better win/loss records over the recent decades than have some of the stronger clubs and it isn’t plausible to argue that they can do this consistently with inferior management.

Again, stating the obvious, but gratifying to see the point made by a footy luminary like Cook.

There’s a huge amount in the document that I haven’t picked up here, especially as regards the salary cap and stadium deals. I encourage everybody to read the document in full. It is as good an education into how footy is arranged right now as you will ever get.

I’m also unsure as to why the Cats chose to release their response publicly. Maybe they are just trying to prove a point about how a very well run sporting organisation manages its affairs?

Maybe?

Just when you thought the AFL couldn’t get any better, or more accurately, worse, they manage to outdo themselves yet again.

The official verdict from on high is that Melbourne didn’t tank.  But they have been fined $500,000, and former Melbourne coach Dean Bailey and then football chief Chris Connolly have been sanctioned for their words and deeds in the period under investigation.

So to reiterate, Melbourne didn’t tank, but the club itself and it’s most senior footy department employees did engage in “conduct prejudicial to the interests of the AFL” during the period investigated by former Federal Police. And that behaviour is worthy of a sum that amounts to about 1/18th of the Dees entire salary cap for the year to come.

What exactly could they have done that was so unbecoming as to cost them equivalent of what they’d probably be paying their best player this year if indeed it wasn’t tanking?

Let us interrogate the Jesuitical logic of Gillon McLachlan:

“The evidence suggests, and Dean Bailey agreed …. he made decisions to ultimately appease Chris. He made decisions to rest players. All three parties, Melbourne FC, Dean Bailey and Chris Connolly have accepted the sanctions.

“There is no evidence to suggest Dean Bailey or any players went out to lose games on match day …. Dean Bailey rested players who were available to play and played players out of position.”

Essentially McLachlan says that Melbourne did not deliberately lose games on matchday. That is, they didn’t all keep kicking it backwards and rushing it through for the opposition until the score was Opponents 256 – Melbourne 0.

But they do say that Melbourne engaged in “conduct prejudicial” in the LEAD UP to games. But according to McLachlan, this is not tanking. The mind boggles.

There are those Dees fans and hierarchy who will see this as a good result. I disagree. Either they tanked or they didn’t. This doesn’t clear their name. It is like that mystifying relic of history that remains in Scottish law: the “not proven” verdict.

It is my belief that Melbourne tanked in 2009. I’m hardly alone there. But the reality is that in the quasi-judicial process as entered into by the AFL belief is not enough. Proof is required.

As the AFL admits in its own statement, it cannot prove there was a directive at Melbourne in order to lose games and it cannot prove on matchday there was a plan to lose. Thus, Melbourne are cleared and walk out the front door. That’s how it is.

The mealy mouthed cowardice displayed by the AFL in trying to have its cake and eat it too – by fining the club and slapping sanctions on Connolly and Bailey they no doubt feel they will be seen to have done something – will only make things far worse down the track. Natural justice has not been served.

Melbourne will forever carry the stain of having engaged in “conduct prejudicial to the interest of the AFL” – whatever that may be, and most of us will just continue in our belief they tanked – in the 2009 season. Dean Bailey is suspended for 16 weeks and has professional name besmirched for  essentially doing what coaches will do every week this season, rest players or perhaps play somebody out of position. In AFL land anyway.

Chris Connolly cops a year long suspension for basically being a tool. According to the AFL he: “acted in a manner concerning pre-game planning, comprising comments to a football department meeting, which was prejudicial to the interests of the AFL.”

No, either he directed the coach to try and lose a game by his selections and coaching, or he didn’t. No grey area.

Everybody knows that the cover up always makes things worse. And this is what the AFL is doing here: engaging in a cover up.  They should either have found Melbourne guilty of tanking and whacked them hard.

Or they should have exonerated them fully, but been crystal clear about what would and wouldn’t constitute tanking, so no club could be under any doubt.

Instead, the AFL has merely extended the grey area on the matter unto infinity. If Bailey cops a whack for “resting players”, should Mark Harvey not get the same for his infamous decision to rest half the Freo team before the game against Hawthorn in 2011?

And if resting players who are fit is “conduct prejudicial to the interests of the AFL” and worthy of a 16 week ban, then surely running such a shoddy footy department that ASADA are forced to investigate what is being injected into your players, because you don’t know, is worth … who knows what?

Make no mistake, the AFL, in their attempt to be cute, have made things worse with this decision. Instead of facing up to the tanking saga, they have simply kicked it down the road to get bigger and uglier and lie in wait to pounce again, as it surely will.

It has been called the blackest day in Australian sport. You have to admit it is a bit of a shocker.

Revelations that the Australian Crime Commission has found evidence of widespread match fixing and use of illegally obtained and used performance enhancing substances has left the wider Australian sport-watching community flummoxed to say the least.

Whatever the truth is, and plenty are mainly concerned with just the names and the dates, the lesson to be learned here is that it has been coming for some time. Whatever the details of the revelation, at some stage, we were going to get a scandal related to professional sporting people crossing the line and breaking the rules in order to either gain an on-field advantage, or maximise their income.

I can remember a time where Australian elite sport still had a recreational feel to it. League footballers, on top of being our heroes on the park every Saturday, would have a beer or three after the match, hold down full time (or near full time) jobs, and probably be able to go grocery shopping or to the movies without being hassled.

But the innate human need for competition, and subsequently, improvement and innovation, coupled with the growing amount of money flowing into the game, meant that eventually footballers would become full time professionals, and physically would need to back it up. This is also true of those two other great Australian team sports: Rugby League and Cricket.

Once financial security is on the line, then the environment is created where pushing and passing the boundaries becomes a viable option for some. Whether through the taking of banned performance enhancing substances or fixing the results of matches for financial gain, the result of a sporting event is manipulated in a prohibited way, and we, the fan, are left cheated and with a growing sense of cynicism about what to believe.

Teams make decisions about the long term and rebuff success in the short term and it becomes a “tanking” scandal. Why? Because, apart from humans being pretty fond of supporting a winner, it cheapens the experience we have when we attend sport. An experience which continues to become more expensive.

I know some people who’ve thought twice about throwing their memberships into the bin when they arrived. I’m nowhere near that stage, but it is disappointing all the same. However, it does reveal that there is growing need for the honestly held concerns of “fankind” to be taken into account when major sporting organisations, managing leagues and competitions worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, make decisions about the future of their respective sports.

It is too easy to call today the death of Australian sporting innocence, because a day like this has been coming for some time. Surely it can be a turning point, and hopefully the common Australian sporting fan is front and centre of considerations from now on. We deserve better than what happened today.

The AFL’s approach to illicit drugs was championed as a world leader of drugs-in-sport policy when it was implemented in 2005. It was fair, humane and had been effective in reducing match day and out-of-season positive test numbers, through better player education and frequency of testing.

In recent months however, some cracks have started to appear.

AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou has flagged that the 2012 data will show an increase in positive tests from the six detections made in 2011. And there are evidently wider concerns within some AFL clubs and sections of the media about levels of drug use among players, and the capacity of the current AFL policy to address this issue into the future.

This prompted the AFL player welfare and drug summit held this week in Melbourne, where a number of key stakeholders and drug health experts gathered to take stock of the current AFL illicit drug policy (IDP), and consider options for change.

Judging from the rhetoric and reaction surrounding Wednesday’s AFL summit, the AFL IDP is about to change, and not necessarily for the better.

If the clubs get their way, they will be more involved in player drug testing and managing the outcomes of positive results. Depending on the model implemented, this could represent an impossible conflict of interest – club business pressures versus their responsibilities to player welfare and community, and inequities in club budgets available for drug-testing are just two factors that could create a real potential for abuse of the AFL drug policy.

The other likely changes to the AFL IDP include a tightening of the rules and ramifications around player self-reporting of drug use, and the expansion of off-season hair drug tests to inform the further target-testing of suspect players.

But the most concerning thing to emerge from AFL drug summit is the strong public message being given by many involved: that all instances of illicit drug use require correction or rehabilitation through mental health counselling and medical treatment.

One well-known psychologist at the AFL summit argued for the use of personality tests on players to measure their “addiction potential”, so they could be flagged as likely to have future problems.

Some clubs want earlier notifications if their players test positive, again because they want to help one way or the other. Tellingly, the Collingwood president’s take on it was that “Players with mental health issues need help and support. Those who are smart-arses need to be belted.”

And, former Hawthorn president, Jeff Kennett argued that clubs should be alerted earlier so they could support the player back to a “condition of good behaviour”.

It became clear this week that many in the AFL, and at least some experts, see drug use as a pathology needing a cure.

Such a stance makes sense from a community message perspective. When individual players inevitably test positive it allows the AFL and the clubs to say two things that the community wants to hear:

1. Player X made the wrong decision, is remorseful, and is receiving the counselling and medical treatment that is necessary to correct his problem.
2. The AFL drug policy is working.

However, the problem with the “drug use = pathology” message is that its simply not true. Not all instances of drug use reflect an underlying mental health or medical problem that requires counselling and treatment. We know from the available data that most people who use drugs never encounter major health harms from doing so, and never require treatment or rehabilitation.

But perhaps the biggest issue with the pathologising message gathering pace in the AFL setting is how the players currently using drugs, and perhaps those around them looking on, might interpret it.

As confronting as this will be for some, the experience of most AFL players using drugs has most likely been positive. They would find drugs exciting, pleasurable, fun, and may have also experienced perhaps unexpected enhancements to their performance in various areas (sexual, cognitive, physical, emotional and so on). That is why they do it.

We have to ask ourselves then, what real value is there in publicly framing drug use as a pathology needing medical treatment and cure, while the private experience couldn’t be more different in most cases?

The danger here is that such conflicting messages about drugs serve to teach the players and the community watching them that if you get caught doing something disapproved of like using drugs, you had better confess to having a mental health or medical problem that needs correcting, submit willingly to that rehabilitation you need, and all will be fixed.

Again, for the most part that’s not true, and it’s rarely that simple.

We should by all means put in place the best evidence-based policy structures and treatment options to assist those individual AFL players who do experience health and other problems caused by or related to drug use. A health and welfare focus like the AFL IDP is more effective than a punitive criminalising approach to illicit drug use.

But, we must also reflect on the credibility of the messages that accompany these health and welfare focused drug policies, in sport and in other domains of life.

The broader issue here is that we have a tendency to panic about drugs in our midst. Parents panic about their children using drugs. Teachers panic about drug use by students. AFL clubs panic about their star players using drugs and the damage to their brand and success.

We panic because we remember the terrible cases of lives ruined and lost through drug dependence. Such cases do exist.

We should also remember that drugs and other psychoactive substances have always served important spiritual, therapeutic, economic and cultural functions in our societies. We should remember that some of the most accomplished and celebrated people in history were drug users – authors, painters, poets, musicians, presidents and prime ministers, sportspeople, soldiers and generals and so on.

We must accept that drugs, illicit and otherwise, will continue to shape our society in the future too.

There is no doubt that the AFL executive, the AFL Players Association, and other community leaders have a responsibility to send appropriate messages about drug use and its potential consequences.

The most credible message we can give here is that we have an AFL illicit drugs policy that can privately provide the appropriate health and welfare assistance to players if and when it is needed.

Saying that all people who use illicit drugs require rehabilitation through mental health counselling and medical treatment is not true, and it is not helpful.

Panicking is no basis for effective drug policy.

I have this vision of Andrew Demetriou watching the coverage of the fighting in Gaza and thinking: “I wonder how you get hold of one of those drones …”

While I doubt the AFL will ever be permitted to obtain a UAV capacity, I wouldn’t put it beyond their ambitions and the evidence supports this view.

The AFL appears to, in its own view, be approaching the status of a state within a state, sort of like how Hezbollah operates in Lebanon, or perhaps the old Tamil Tiger statelet in Sri Lanka.

The AFL operates its own quasi-government these days, complete with industrial relation regimes and increasingly – and worryingly – what appears to be its attempt at establishing a shadow judiciary.

Now the AFL has always had the quaint institution of the tribunal. Everyone knows that it has no real basis in law – as whinging clubs like the Swans like to prove periodically when one of their players is rubbed out before an important final – but everyone goes along with it (unless it is the Swans etc etc).

In fact, the tribunal is an oddity that sees men given four weeks off work for committing acts that would probably see them sentenced to four months prison if they were being tried in the dreary anonymity of the Ringwood Magistrates court.

No, the AFL has no gone a step further. It is building what appears to be some sort of FBI (Footy Bureau of Investigation). This would be slightly comical, if it weren’t so serious.

Take this report on the ongoing Adelaide/Tippet drama:

AFL investigators have swooped on the Adelaide Crows’ West Lakes offices seizing computers and bank records as the Kurt Tippett scandal deepens.

You what?

Seizing computers and bank records? Ummm … the AFL is conducting raids on clubs now? By what authority?

It gets worse.

In the Melbourne tanking investigation, we’re told that AFL investigators Brett Clothier and Abraham Haddad, the league’s intelligence co-ordinator, are interviewing and re-interviewing various Melbourne staff.

Haddad is serious customer, a policeman with international experience in some fairly hairy spots like Cambodia. I don’t imagine he has a “go easy” setting.  Do assistant coaches really need to be grilled by a bloke like this over stuff that happened in what is, after all, only a game? Being interviewed, repeatedly, by police can be a distressing, verging on traumatic, experience.

By what right does the AFL inflict such an experience on people, especially when the crime it is “investigating” is one the AFL itself denied existed for years.

Things get worse. Take this from The Age:

A clause has been included in AFL standard playing contracts requiring players to provide telephone records, bank account details and computer hard drives in the event of any unusual or suspicious activity. Those details would then become part of the database.

This is simply incredible. No other employer in Australia – outside of actual police forces and associated organisations – would dare impose such conditions on employees.

The AFL’s defence in all this is that it must take allegations of misconduct seriously because government gambling regulators and the like have shown an interest in allegations of tanking and the like. That’s fair enough – match fixing is indeed a criminal activity – as Pakistani cricketer Salman Butt found out. The Federal government has established an Integrity in Sport body to look into such institutional cheating like match fixing and drug cheating that might involve criminal activity.

In this case, if there’s a genuine case that criminal activity might have taken place, real life actual cops and genuine courts should get involved, not the AFL’s mickey mouse outfits.

Like all petty jack booters, the AFL’s defence is that people with nothing to hide should have nothing to fear. That is the pathetic defence of the scoundrel. People don’t have to prove their innocence in this country, their guilt must be proven.

I hope the AFLPA take the AFL to task on this, but I suspect they will be bought off with a few more shiny coins. After all, a man can never have too many Ed Hardy shirts, or stupid tattoos.

I just hope the players don’t mind a funny sound over their Mad Monday venue in coming years. A funny, insistent buzzing sound …

Paul Sergeant has just taken over as the head honcho at Etihad Stadium. And he wants to shake things up.

As this article shows, Sergeant, wearing what appears to be one of Bill Cosby’s cast off crazy sweaters, wants there to be more razzle dazzle at games. He thinks this might help arrest a decline in attendances.

Sayeth Sergeant:

“The whole experience of going to an NBA game blows your socks off because they make use of the arrival experience, the video boards, the monitors around the venue, the PA system.

“Those sports in different parts of the world are out there. It’s about going, ‘well what can we look at? What can we learn from them?’ then translate it back into what can we do at our venues.”

To which I would reply, thanks but no thanks Paul.

I’m reminded of this excellent ad for Budweiser – about the only good thing relating to that insipid cat’s piss – that aired in the UK when the US brewing giant sponsored the Premier League.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjI-qh37xf0

The ad agency hired by Budweiser knew instinctively that the English audience would rebel against the idea of an American influence on their sport. For them, “American sport” mean razzle dazzle, cheerleaders and bigger is better because it is just is. This ad cleverly plays on those well-deserved stereotypes of American sport

People want less razzle dazzle, not more. They want fewer opportunities to have ads shoved down their throat, especially if those ads promote gambling. They are sick of their kids asking them at half time who they have bet on, or informing them that their team is at poor odds to come back.

The average punter in the outer knows the Good Old Days have gone and are not about to come back.  The days of all games starting at 2PM on a Saturday and people being home in time to pick up the early edition of the Sporting Globe from the New Australians at the corner milk bar are long gone.

But we do not have to rush so headlong into the future. Much as many fans are frustrated with the annual rule changes, so the rapid change in when and where games are played is alienating some supporters.

Attendances are not falling because people feel that the big screen is not dynamic enough at three quarter time. Attendances are falling because the AFL makes their team play at times that simply do not suit modern lifestyles.

TV money is now the lifeblood of the game. The AFL makes teams play at times that encourage people to watch games on TV.  The AFL effectively lets the TV stations decide when games should be played.

Paul Sergeant has an impressive sounding resume. He’s managed world class stadia like Wembley and the Millennium stadium in Wales. Yet as well known as these venues are, and massive as some of the fixtures they host may be, I’m yet to see a home and away game of AFL played at either.

Just as our code is utterly unique onfield, so we have our own off field traditions and foibles. Sergeant would have spent plenty of time in his Wembley days working with the Metropolitan Police on ways in which to keep rival groups of fans separated after the conclusion of an Association Football fixture.

That’s not a skill that translates down under.

Instead of lobbing here and immediately telling us we need stuff from abroad – Oh, what is this NBA you speak of Great One? We mere provincials had never heard of such a thing! How sophisticated you are! – Sergeant would be wiser to find out what it is we like about going to the footy and trying to maximise that.

Given that the game is rigged against him with the AFL deliberately scheduling games to increase TV audiences, Sergeant would do well to play to the strengths available to him, not give people yet another reason to stay home and mute the crap at half time anyway.