Rucci: We can’t point the finger at others over integrity
MICHELANGELO RUCCI
The Advertiser
June 20, 2014 8:36PM
PERHAPS it is the Ned Kelly in us ... or the convict traditions of the First Settlers.
That Australian way of telling authority to stop haranguing the little bloke, more so when he has put up his hand and done his time.
The widespread reaction to the Essendon Football Club supplements saga leaves much to digest — and too much that challenges Australia’s long-standing finger pointing across the world, particularly in China, Ireland, Spain and Bulgaria, to demand integrity in sport.
The misunderstanding - or misrepresenting - of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and its processes for an investigation either reflects frustration from ignorance or hypocrisy with Australia’s attitude on drugs in sport.
Let’s consider the big players in the long-running Essendon supplements saga.
ASADA. Perhaps the “drug cops” have been under-funded and under-resourced. Maybe the men who supposedly failed to get a positive test on Brownlow Medallist Ben Cousins (for social drugs) are green horns.
But, in the spirit of demanding sport be cleaned and never have its integrity compromised, why has the commentary on ASADA been based on lampooning their investigators as the modern version of the Keystone Cops? Why has there not been a demand from the public and nation’s leading sporting federations to the Federal Government to beef up this unit to be the best anti-doping agency in the world?
AFL PLAYERS’ ASSOCIATION. The AFL players’ union is representing the Essendon players caught in the horrid supplements saga. But is this sending the right message from the players’ body?
Every AFL player, we hope, wants to be part of a fair and clean competition. The players’ union should reflect that principle. It should defend the rights of the AFL athletes who stay true to this premise.
Those players who roam off the ranch - after failing to remember they have full responsibility for what goes into their bodies - hardly deserve the support of their union. This body already has made them rich enough to hire Queen’s Counsel to represent their interests.
The AFLPA should stand for integrity in sport - without compromise. The question of whether the Essendon players have their contracts honoured by the Bombers should they cop any bans from ASADA should not be on the AFLPA agenda.
If the Bombers players were “duped”, their army of QCs will not be short of arguments for law suits against the Essendon Football Club.
Although, if the Essendon players en masse negotiate for six-month bans from September 1, they can walk through a loophole in the WADA code that allows them to serve their penalty in the summer and return for pre-season training on March 1 without missing a game, even pre-season matches.
AFL CLUBS. So far, the strongest backlash from Essendon’s AFL rivals is a few presidents making thinly veiled jibes at the Bombers at league meetings or taking seats far away from Essendon chairman Paul Little.
And now that Little has threatened legal action against the AFL, the rival presidents are urging Essendon to back off. Self-interest rules here, of course.
Essendon’s 17 rivals, remembering how the AFL coffers were drained when the league was caught up in a law suit with the Seven television network a decade ago, know Essendon’s legal challenge puts at risk how much money is farmed out to the AFL clubs at the end of the year and next season.
It would be fascinating to know what attitude would have come from the AFL clubs had this saga not involved Essendon, one of the league’s big brands. What if it had been Sydney? Considering the outspoken remarks made against the Swans with their league-approved cost of living allowance, the outrage towards Sydney would have been deafening.
With Essendon, there is silence.
ESSENDON FOOTBALL CLUB. So far, the Bombers have confessed to poor governance. For this they have copped their AFL-imposed penalties against officials such as senior coach James Hird, the football program with the loss of draft picks and the club itself that became the first to be disqualified from a finals series.
But Essendon still cannot tell its players what they were subjected to - and, even with the black spot, insist there was no cheating at Windy Hill in 2012.
While critics ask why ASADA has not interviewed Stephen Dank, the man who orchestrated Essendon’s contentious fitness program in 2012, the more meaningful point is: Why have the Bombers not used all their might and legal power to force Dank to detail everything that happened at Windy Hill two years ago?
If the players’ welfare is first and foremost in this debate, Essendon surely takes on Dank - and Dank, out of care for the players, puts all his notes on the table for them to see.
Instead, Essendon rushes to the Federal Court to sue the AFL and ASADA to protect its brand.
Yet, the process surely dictates Essendon take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
This is where athletes are guaranteed their right to protest against an anti-doping agency.
The case may finish up before an international jury in Lausanne, Switzerland. And that would be interesting. How would the world judge Australia after Australians were so quick to judge Chinese and Irish swimmers, Spanish cyclists and Bulgarian weightlifters - and are now stumbling with an issue in our own backyard?
