Current and former Essendon players are banned for this AFL season because of doping, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport handed down a stunning verdict on Tuesday.
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Thirty-four Australian Football League (AFL) players were Tuesday slapped with lengthy bans over doping offences after the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a World Anti-Doping Agency appeal. CAS said most of the 34 would be suspended until November 13 this year, depending on the backdating that applies in each case.
Wada’s successful appeal of the AFL Tribunal verdict – which had found decisively against the Australian Sport Anti-Doping Authority – was led by renowned doping lawyer Young, who had been among those who prosecuted disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong and had helped devise the Wada code.
The three-man CAS panel was comfortably satisfied that the players took thymosin beta-4 as part of the club’s controversial supplements program.
More than 30 players associated with Australian rules team Essendon FC have been banned after being injected with a drug to improve performance.
Essendon and the AFL had made contingency plans about top-up players, who also were used during last year’s pre-season competition as provisional bans were served.
The decisions stem from a 2012 investigation into the club’s player supplements and sports science programme and in particular use of prohibited peptide Thymosin Beta-4. Shortly before the ruling, the club called for support for the players.
It is not yet known whether Watson will also be stripped of his 2012 Brownlow medal.
All in all, the team is pretty much wiped out for the 2016 season.
The Club is now digesting the decision and we will provide a further update later today.
‘The players had received anti-doping education through the AFL and ASADA, and were well aware that they are personally responsible for all substances that entered their body, ‘ McDevitt said.
“I am shocked by this decision”, Hird said in a statement.
“(The players’) livelihood, and what they’ve trained and worked hard to do, is gone. “At worst, they were complicit in a culture of secrecy and concealment”, he said.
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The players were all initially cleared of the charges but WADA appealed to CAS.
