The plight of suspended Collingwood duo Josh Thomas and Lachlan Keeffe reinforces the view that the AFL's illicit drugs policy needs urgent change, says Magpies chief executive Gary Pert.
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Pert was speaking after the pair announced they had accepted two-year bans, backdated to last March, and $50,000 fines from the AFL anti-doping tribunal for taking the banned performance-enhancing substance Clenbuterol. Pert described what had transpired as "a turning point for our code and, more broadly, for Australian sport".
Both midfielder Thomas and key defender Keeffe conceded that they had most likely inadvertently ingested the Clenbuterol while using illicit drugs, a possibility Pert believed "99 per cent" of Australian sportspeople would not have contemplated before the season. The pair stressed that "at no stage did we knowingly take Clenbuterol".
"The review of the AFL's Illicit Drug Policy that is under way is not only warranted but change is necessary," Pert said on Monday.
He thought that no one in football would have foreseen that taking an illicit substance "could derail your career and do this sort of damage".
"There is no longer a separation between illicit and performance-enhancing drugs. Anyone in our game who chooses to consume illicit drugs must also, from now on, accept that they may also be consuming performance-enhancing drugs.
"I remind everyone that Lachlan and Josh made decisions to take illicit drugs, not performance-enhancing drugs, on the assumption that even if detected they would only receive a strike without sanction and their identities would have remained anonymous.
"This is clearly not a big enough deterrent. We need to have an industry policy that has a consequence big enough to convince all players to say no."
The AFL's review of its three-strikes illicit drugs code was announced in May and is due to be concluded by the end of the season, allowing new protocols to be in place for the start of the off-season.
AFL players are being hair-tested as part of the review; however they cannot be sanctioned as a result of any positive tests. The tests are being used purely to obtain data to determine the extent of AFL players' drug use.
Collingwood will delist Thomas and Keeffe at the end of the season but have committed to re-drafting them as rookies should they be available.
Since the code was introduced in 2005 as a voluntary undertaking with the AFL PLayers' Association, annual figures have been released to show the number of positive tests. The AFLPA has indicated it would prefer the findings no longer be released.
In an interview last week on Channel Nine, AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan was allowed to answer "yes," "no" or "maybe" to a series of questions. Asked whether the contentious three-strikes policy would continue in 2016, McLachlan said "no".
The AFL's issues with illicit drugs were again thrust into the national spotlight last month when photos of Gold Coast midfielder Harley Bennell, who appeared to be using an illicit substance, were published in several News Corp publications.
