Dane Swan says he would have been no different to Watson had the catastrophic Essendon supplements regime of 2012 taken place at Collingwood in 2011, with the recently retired Magpie great arguing that he would have placed full trust in his club's medical and high-performance staff that what they were providing to players was legal.

Watson faces the prospect of losing his 2012 Brownlow after a Swiss court rejected the appeal of 34 current and former Essendon players, who had been banned for the duration of the 2016 season by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. They had been found guilty of taking banned substance Thymosin Beta-4 in 2012.

The AFL Commission is set to adjudicate on November 15 as to whether Watson should be stripped of his Brownlow. Should that happen, it remains to be seen whether Hawthorn's Sam Mitchell and Richmond's Trent Cotchin – runners-up to Watson four years ago – would be awarded medals.

Swan, who won in 2011, said he had sympathy for Watson and the other banned players, and wanted his former midfield rival to hold onto the game's most storied individual accolade. "I think he should keep it. If you take it off him, who do you give it to?" Swan told Fairfax Media as he continues to promote his recently released autobiography, Dane Swan: My Story.

"Do you give it to the bloke who finished second?

"I think he [Watson] deserves it. We still don't know if he did anything wrong. So I don't know how you can take it off him. I would like to see him keep it, but I certainly won't be the person making that decision.

"I think it just becomes very messy and muddled. So I think either leave it as is or take it off and give it to no one, or [let it him keep it] and put an asterisk next to it like they did with the baseball over there."

Despite a longstanding antipathy towards Essendon, Swan said he felt for the 34 players given the trust they placed in sports scientist Stephen Dank and the club's football department as a whole.

"Of course, I'm sympathetic to the Bombers players," Swan said.

"You put your faith into the medical staff. I would have been in the same boat. I would have been suspended that year. If our doc had have come up and said to me 'we've got this, take this', I'm not going to argue," he said.

"You put your life in their hands. I don't think it's their fault at all. Of course, I feel sympathetic. But in the end they copped what they copped and hopefully finally we can put it all behind us, and hopefully Essendon – as much as I don't like Essendon – hopefully for their supporters they play some good footy for them."