Senate Estimates questions on notice are now up on the APH site.
Di Natale submitted four questions on ASADA ( q 395 to 398) Two on the interim review ( purpose and timing, why it did not review AFL conduct etc); investigations of other AFL clubs; provision of text meeesages of other AFL clubs to CAS.
Answers are due on 21 April, but don’t hold your breath on them being available on the site by then, as there were over 400 questions to the portfolio.
I notice that that weasel Farrell is asking questions about an ASC review but not interested in an ASADA review ( see questions 85- 86).
5 Likes
She should watch her back. John won’t be pleased.
4 Likes
Very interesting lines of questioning from Di Natale
Surely won’t be answered properly by ASADA, will be backpeddling and deflecting galore.
1 Like
I am a firm believer that Justice always has its day. It might take a long time and we have seen that with the length of time to get a children in care royal commission started. Many years after events.
Generally it takes both political will power and public pressure.
I doubt that either of the main parties want to touch this matter becuase neither side will come out looking good.
Rather it might take a while for a government with clean hands prepared to establishing a judicial enquiry.
Hopefully pressure can be brought on the politicians sooner and Justice for 34 seem to be doing a great job in keeping this issue pushed forward.
The other side of the equations “public pressure” is something we can all get involved in. Continue to press the media to tell the truth, continue to email people of influence and seek support.
Should one day Essendon FC stick its neck out and support a judicial enquiry this would be a strong symbolic gesture and add to public pressure.
3 Likes
I gave change some money to change.com it was my understanding it allowed the Justice for 24 post to go to a larger audience. I would be happy to give some support to the Justice for 34. Maybe Justice for 34 could set up a Go Fund Me account?
1 Like
Best you ask them on here before doing anything.
AOC president John Coates drops champion Australian athletesApril 19, 2017 8:48pm
Leo SchlinkSOME of the nation’s most accomplished athletes have been cut adrift by John Coates as the veteran administrator clings to the Australian Olympic Committee presidency.
In a move condemned as “cynical and farcical”, Coates has formed a ticket of seven preferred board members ahead of the May 6 election.
The Herald Sun understands hockey star Rechelle Hawkes, one of only two Australian women to win Olympic gold at three separate Games, and swimmer Nicole Livingstone are out of favour with Coates.
And canoeist Danielle Woodward and dual Commonwealth Games champion diver Michael Murphy, a Harvard graduate, are also believed to have been left off the Coates ticket.
Coates is fighting to stave off a growing threat from Olympic champion Danni Roche.
Coates is under fire for forming a ticket in what are “free and fair elections”.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one Olympic administrator said: “Coates’ desperation and desire for control knows no bounds.
“He is under challenge for the first time in 27 years and doesn’t like it.
“He is known for ruthlessness and if he suspects people he has supported will vote for Danni Roche, he won’t hesitate to marginalise them.”
Roche, who is steadily gathering support after pledging to channel an extra $3 million into underfunded Australian Olympic sports, will not form a ticket ahead of the vote.
She sent letters to 15 impoverished federations on Sunday, vowing to use savings from Coates’ contentious $750,000 consultancy fee to — in some cases — triple funding. She has promised to cap her allowance at $100,000 a year and search for other administrative savings to meet her pledge to low-funded sports.
The Roche campaign continues to gain traction, even among sports traditionally favoured by Coates.
The political fault lines have become clearer with the sidelining of Hawkes, Livingstone, Woodward and Murphy.
It is understood Coates has endorsed Kitty Chiller (modern pentathlon), Mark Arbib (athletics), Matt Allen (sailing), Craig Carracher (volleyball), Tracey Gaudry (cycling), David Hynes (softball/baseball) and Evelyn Halls (fencing). But several of those candidates, including Allen and Gaudry, are unlikely to back Coates in the ballot.
A record 11 candidates will vie for seven board openings.
Former St Kilda president Andrew Plympton (sailing) will stand for one of two vice-presidential positions against Coates’ allies, Ian Chesterman (ski and snowboard) and Helen Brownlee (canoeing).
Olympic champions Nick Green and Steve Hooker are not seeking re-election.
Plympton was the first of the board members to defect from Coates, nominating support of fellow Australian Sports Commission board member Roche.
A member of the AOC’s remuneration and nominations committee, which reviews consultancy fees and executive salaries, Plympton was initially supported by Coates.
But his push for a review of the AOC wage structure — and particularly Coates’ salary — saw Plympton fall out with the Sydney powerbroker.
Bye bye now Johnny boy
2 Likes
Number 3 is simply a Yes answer.
Can’t understand number 4- why would ASADA be referring text messages to CAS?
There were relevant text messages in regard to Dank and the Melbourne Doctor and in regard to Robinson and Dank activities at GCS.
I would expect ASADA to claim not relevant, as the CAS case involved Essendon but at the same time ASADA evidence drew on heavily on text exchanges to inculpate Essendon. Did ASADA benchmark those texts against text exchanges relating to other AFL clubs?
There is more evidence against GCS than Essendon, but then the AFL, as the GCS owner, might have been the defending party.
9 Likes
Agree, but the question seems odd. Why would ASADA refer texts to CAS. Surely the question should have been whether ASADA has considered an investigation of those texts and if not why not, especially as you say, they were more inculpatory than the evidence against Essendon.
Question 3 and 4 are killer questions - It will be tricky for ASADA to provide a reasonable answer - De Natale knows his stuff.
7 Likes
Don’t overlook the fact that ASADA had a lot of information from its involvement in the ACC investigation, which would have included reams of texts. At the time,. ASADA could not disclose the ACC records and had to start the doping investigations afresh. At that time its investigative powers were limited Hence the joint investigations with the AFL.
ASADA has longstanding information sharing arrangements with the AFL. The AFL would have been aware of concerns about other clubs well before the ACC report came out. Journos were circling before then Seems to me that a decision was made to hit one NRL and AFL club. Remember Evans asking are we the club?
So, what were the AFL conditions for agreeing to a joint investigation?
The questions are all directed at exposing the dirty dealings between ASADA and the AFL. On their own, without getting the answers, they provide an incentive for Hunt to reconsider his position and to ask ASADA a few more questions.
3 Likes
Justice for the 34 provided these questions to Di Natale, and many more which didn’t make it into Questions on Notice
12 Likes
Here is the full argument regarding these texts:
A program implemented at the Melbourne Football Club, similar to the Essendon program, was not subject to an ASADA investigation; no report was issued and there were no penalties. The program had similar injections as the Essendon program, the electronic communications were similar, the architect of the program was the same, but it escaped sanction. Melbourne did nothing wrong; and neither did Essendon.
The text messages relevant to the Melbourne program were not presented to CAS. The transcript of a relevant ABC 7.30 Report of April 18, 2013 relating to the Melbourne program was not presented to the CAS; yet a transcript of the ABC 7.30 Report program of May 2, 2013 relating to the Essendon program was presented to the CAS.
There has been a failure to present evidence relating to the Essendon program which clearly suggested the Essendon players being administered with a legal substance Thymomodulin, not the banned substance Thymosin Beta 4.
In the CAS Ruling para. 105, it states that “WADA is obliged to eliminate all possibilities which could point to the Players innocence.”
Neither WADA nor CAS addressed this evidence.
Regulation requires regulators to act without fear or favour, not to target. In the Essendon case, ASADA does not appear to have applied a consistent set of regulatory standards which would have allowed athletes to prove their innocence.
16 Likes
Only loosely related to the saga, but there are at least a couple of interesting points:
CMAJ March 20, 2017 vol. 189 no. 11 doi: 10.1503/cmaj.1095401
News
A place for pot in sports?
Roger Collier
- Author Affiliations
CMAJ
For professional athletes, dealing with pain is an everyday problem, even after they retire. Torn ligaments, dislocated shoulders, busted knees and other injuries are part of the job and tend to have a lasting impact. Something that isn’t so common in sports is medical marijuana, which remains off limits in some leagues, even though it doesn’t make athletes stronger or faster or enhance performance in any other way. Some athletes, however, are challenging old attitudes about cannabis, suggesting it is a safer alternative to managing pain than the drugs commonly used in sports.
In Canada, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports manages an anti-doping program, and sports organizations that are signatories to the program can’t allow their athletes to use drugs on a prohibited list. The list was created by the World Anti-Doping Agency and it includes marijuana.
“If an athlete has a medical condition that requires them to take a specific medication (such as marijuana) that appears on the prohibited list, they can apply for a medical exemption,” the centre said in a statement. “We aren’t able to comment on the anti-doping policies of professional leagues, but ideally, we would like to see professional sports adopt code-compliant anti-doping programs.”
It should come as no surprise that contact sports have higher injury rates, and there is perhaps no professional sport with more bone-jarring contact that football. For example, in the 2015 season of the National Football League (NFL), it took only two weeks for 15% of all players to suffer an injury.
Some former NFL players recently participated in an event called “Cannabis in Professional Sports” in hopes of changing attitudes about using marijuana to manage pain in professional football. Some of the players said the injuries they sustained during their athletic careers mean they now live in chronic pain. One former player said he couldn’t even bend over to pick up his children.
To deal with the pain, some used alcohol or dangerous illicit drugs, such as heroin, before turning to cannabis. Public endorsement of medical marijuana remains taboo among current NFL players, however, because taking a stand could cost them their jobs.
The NFL isn’t the only American sports league that bans marijuana. The National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball also prohibit the drug. Canadian sports leagues tend to be more lax in this area. The Canadian Football League doesn’t test for marijuana. A third of National Hockey League players are randomly tested for street drugs, including marijuana, but they aren’t disciplined for positive tests.
Liberal use of prescription drugs, however, is common in most professional sports. It is well known that the need to manage pain in the NFL has led to a culture of drug use and abuse. To remain on the field, many players take large quantities of painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Using pills and injections is as commonplace as attending practices and taking ice baths.
A survey of former NFL players found that 52% had used opioids during their playing days, and the rate of opioid use among retired players was triple that of the general population. The NFL Players Association, which represents the interests of the athletes, has formed a pain management committee to explore using marijuana as a treatment for pain, and has implored the league to take a less punitive stance on the use of cannabis.
Figure
Injuries — and pain — are inevitable in contact sports such as football.
Image courtesy of smileitsmccheeze/iStock
Producers of medical marijuana are optimistic that the drug will eventually be seen as safer alternative to pharmaceutical-based pain management, not only in sports but all of society. “Although human studies on the therapeutic effects of cannabis have been significantly limited to date (largely due to restrictive legal regimes), anecdotal patient reports suggest that opportunities for the use of medical cannabis in the treatment of chronic pain are significant,” said Brent Zettl, president and CEO of CanniMed Therapeutics Inc. in Saskatchewan.
Some cannabis producers are funding research on pain management to fill the void, including British Columbia-based Tilray. The company funded a survey recently published in the International Journal of Drug Policy on substituting cannabis for prescription opioids and other substances. “There is a growing amount of evidence suggesting that cannabis is a safer substitute for many prescription drugs, particularly opioids,” said Philippe Lucas, vice president of patient research and access at Tilray. “Increasing the understanding and acceptance of medical cannabis as a relatively safe and effective treatment for chronic pain and other conditions could reduce the medical community’s dependence on opioids.”
1 Like
It took the AFL 6 months (Feb 2013 - Aug 2013) to hammer Essendon and 12 months (April 2013 - April 2014) to clear Melbourne.
Why 12 months? More to investigate? Or was it too much of a hot potato that took the public’s attention off the Bombers, so let sleeping dogs lie?
If nothing wrong at the Dees, then why did the club doctor fall on his sword?
6 Likes
That’s easy, Essendon acted alone silly!
AFL brand protection & AFL ■■■■ covering
3 Likes
Article by Bomber in The Rage, can’t upload as on mobile.
Reading this article brings back all the rage I thought had subsided
13 Likes