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Welcome to World Footy News Thursday, April 25 2024 @ 09:54 am ACST

AFL illicit drugs policy an industry blueprint - ASC follows suit

General News

Effective from October 1st this year, the Australian Sports Commission has launched its Illicit Drugs in Sport Policy (PDF available here). It’s come with little fanfare. The policy will apply to AIS Athlete Scholarship Holders, and Athlete Support Personnel and employees and Board Members of the ASC, as well as anyone else who agrees to be bound by the policy. What is most interesting about this policy however, is the number of strikes. Effectively, a 3-strike policy with a 4th strike resulting in termination of AIS scholarship. Given the broad public debate that has surrounded the AFL and its 3 strikes policy, it’s astounding that this piece of news effectively went through to the keeper.

Coming from a Government body, this is a far cry from the days of the previous Howard Government when the AFL was accused of being soft on drugs. There was at the time much confusion, however, it was a hot topic. So much so that it became an election issue that back fired on the Howard Government. In the lead up to the 2007 election, John Howard even managed to illustrate a complete lack of understanding of the issue when speaking to Neil Mitchell in May 2007 on radio 3AW.

It’s worth recalling :

NM: What do you want them (AFL) to do?

PM: We just want them to have a tougher policy.

NM: But no other sport that I understand does testing for illicit drugs outside competition. That's a start isn't it? Aren't they tougher in that sense?

PM: No, I don't think they are tougher than the other sports. I'm surprised to hear you suggest that they are tougher. I don't think they are.

NM: Well, they're tougher in terms of testing outside of competition.

PM: Well, I'm not sure that other - I stand corrected on that but that was not my understanding.

Kimberley Crow, (who is an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship holder, member of the women's rowing team and graduate lawyer), wrote an interesting piece on the ‘Backpagelead’ site on October 4th.

In the past we’ve seen various Olympic and other athletes quizzed about the AFL 3 strikes policy and in listening to the response, it was clear the athlete in question had no idea that the AFL policy was above, beyond and additional to WADA testing.

The message appears to be getting through, the following comments from Crow highlight this :

By testing AFL players for illicit drugs out of competition, the AFL was actually going above and beyond their obligations under the WADA Code. The nature of the sanctions for those illicit drugs breaches - or the three-strike rule - should be understood in the context of the actual comprehensiveness of AFL's testing regime.

In fact, the AFL can take some form of comfort that their policy is now something of an industry blueprint. The purpose and principles guiding the ASC IDiS are largely identical to those of the AFL IDP.

This author's personal opinion for some time has been that the AFL and Andrew Demetriou may well be judged far more kindly through the passage of time than they have been. The policy may not be perfect in the eyes of all, however, it has broken new ground and as Crow suggests, is becoming somewhat of an ‘industry blueprint’. The probably not so surprising thing is, the news of the ASC drugs policy was pretty well invisible in the mainstream press.