Drug agency to check on the AFL’s testing of its players

Sport Integrity Australia says it will assess allegations around illicit drug tests in the AFL as the league admits it empowers club doctors to remove players from matches if they are at risk of testing positive on match day.

SIA confirmed on Wednesday that it had begun an assessment of allegations made in Parliament by federal MP Andrew Wilkie.

Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin on Wednesday.

AFL chief executive officer Andrew Dillon welcomed the action of SIA, adding that the league “encourages Mr Wilkie to pass on all the documents in his possession to SIA”.

Wilkie tried to table in Parliament signed statements detailing the allegations, but was refused permission. He referred to allegations made by “former Melbourne Football Club president Glen Bartlett, former Melbourne team doctor Zeeshan Arain, and Shaun Smith, father of Melbourne player … Joel Smith”.

The AFL said it “looks forward to working with SIA and providing any information on the AFL illicit drug policy and its objectives and operation”.

The AFL’s illicit drug policy is an agreement between the AFL and the Players Association, not the clubs, which tests for illicit drugs only, conducted by clubs doctors. The results are kept confidential, and not disclosed to clubs.

Separately, SIA runs drug tests for the World Anti-Doping Agency, specifically for performance-enhancing drugs, but which can also capture and punish recreational drugs, with an emphasis on game-day testing.

Wilkie claimed in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night that club doctors were conducting tests in the week leading up to a match on players who had previously failed an illicit drug test for banned substances. Wilkie said others alleged that players who failed these tests were then rested, “ostensibly on account of injury”.

Players who test positive for illicit drugs on match day face long, even career-ending penalties, under WADA’s anti-doping code.

Wilkie named the Demons specifically, but alleged that the practice was widespread around the league, revealing a former Melbourne club doctor said it had been done with the authorisation of the AFL’s then chief medical officer.

Demons coach Simon Goodwin said on Wednesday that he was unaware of any such practice because of the secrecy that surrounded the AFL’s illicit drugs policy, which excludes clubs and coaches from knowing about testing.

“That’s information that I’ve got no idea about,” the Melbourne coach said. “This policy is an AFL policy, it is an AFLPA policy and it’s led through a medical model. So you’re asking me questions that I have no line of sight over.

“I think it’s a surprise to everyone in the industry because there’s no line of sight for me in my position as a head coach. So I understand the policy, but I don’t get the information that people would expect [me] to get, so it’s news to me.”

Goodwin said the claims aired by Wilkie did not make him second-guess information he was given by club doctors. “You just take it on face value, and as I said, this is a process that the AFL, the [AFL Players Association] and the club doctors put together from a confidentiality perspective.”

The AFL’s Dillon told reporters the practice described by Wilkie was in line with the clinical intervention model doctors used when dealing with players who were vulnerable to using illicit drugs. The AFL said it was incumbent on officials to ensure players who may have illicit substances in their system were withdrawn from matches rather than play while affected by any drug categorised as performance-enhancing under the WADA Code.

The AFL said on Wednesday that its illicit drug policy was focused on the health and wellbeing of players.

“Urine tests conducted by doctors to determine if a player has used illicit substances are part of the AFL’s illicit drug policy medical model and have been for some time,” the league said in a statement.

“Doctors may use those urine tests to obtain an immediate result to determine whether any illicit substance remains in a player’s system. This is normally conducted at the club or in the doctor’s consulting rooms.

“If the test shows a substance is still in the player’s system, a doctor will take steps to prevent a player from taking part in either training and/or an AFL match both for their own health and welfare and because having illicit substances in your system on match day may be deemed performance-enhancing and a breach of the Australian Football Anti-Doping Code (depending on the substance involved).”

The statement said it was “absolutely imperative” that no doctor or official “should ever allow or encourage a player to take the field knowing they have recently taken an illicit substance that may be harmful to their health and/or may be deemed performance-enhancing”.

Dillon claimed the number of players regularly tested under the system was low, but admitted the AFL did not make public the number of players who tested positive to illicit drugs. The league has stayed silent on that number since 2016.

“The private medical information of the players is private medical information and that is what we prioritise above everything else,” Dillon said. “What we are talking about here is a small handful of players over a year.”

Dillon said he was not planning to talk to Wilkie about the concerns he raised.

Wilkie, the member for the Tasmanian seat of Clark, told parliament on Tuesday that Arain, who worked as Demons doctor from 2014 to 2020, provided him with a signed statement, which he read out in parliament.

“Here is what happens as has been described to me. The AFL wants the player to play at all costs and so the cover-up begins. If there are no illegal drugs in the player’s system, they are free to play. If there are drugs in their system, the player is often asked to fake an injury,” Wilkie said.

“In other words, hundreds of thousands of Australians will watch the game not knowing that the game has been secretly manipulated by the AFL.”

Wilkie also said that Arain had written that “this isn’t just a Melbourne problem, this is an AFL problem with multiple players coming to Melbourne from other teams with pre-existing cocaine dependencies”. The politician said in parliament that the revelations “indicated that drug-testing workarounds are, in fact, commonplace elsewhere in the AFL”.

Wilkie’s motion to table the documents was supported by independents Zoe Daniel, Monique Ryan, Zali Stegall and Andrew Gee.

Rebekah Sharkie, of the Centre Alliance Party, described the allegations as horrific and urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to investigate them.

“It’s hard to know whether I was more horrified by those allegations, or the fact that leave was not granted to allow the member for Clark to table these documents,” Sharkie said. “The call is on the prime minister to read these documents.”

Melbourne’s Joel Smith is facing anti-doping charges after testing positive to cocaine on game day last year after random testing conducted by SIA detected the substance in his system. He is also facing trafficking charges — not criminal charges, but for trafficking as defined under anti-doping legislation – after SIA examined his phone.

Joel’s father Shaun took aim at what he described as a toxic AFL culture, calling for a major overhaul of the illicit drugs policy.

“They [AFL] have said they are basically letting players avoid being caught. That’s what the AFL have admitted. I find that absolutely astounding,” he said.

He said the revelations did not excuse Joel’s actions.

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Dr Zeeshan Arain’s first name was incorrectly spelt and has since been corrected.