Former Essendon skipper Jobe Watson has revealed he had a fear of needles and only took part in the club’s ultimately haphazard supplements program of 2012 because he was captain.
The Bombers became embroiled in arguably the AFL’s greatest ever scandal in 2013 when it emerged that through the previous season they had been involved in an injecting program to improve soft-tissue recovery times and handle heavier training loads.
Jobe Watson on this week’s episode of Unfiltered.Credit: Channel Seven
While the players had been assured that all the supplements were approved by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, 34 of them, including Watson, were eventually handed two-year bans by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in January 2016 (backdated to March 2015) for taking the banned drug, Thymosin Beta-4.
Watson handed back the Brownlow Medal he won in 2012, and the sport’s most prestigious individual honour was presented retrospectively to the two men who trailed him in the vote count, Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin.
The fallout of the scandal reverberates to this day, although Watson said he was now in a more “comfortable” mental space to discuss the saga, having learnt to “normalise it, or you can joke about it”.
In an episode of Seven’s Unfiltered to be aired on Wednesday night, Watson opened up about the supplements program run by disgraced biochemist Stephen Dank.
Several Essendon players, including Watson, were initially hesitant when the injecting program was introduced during James Hird’s coaching tenure, but they still signed consent forms that later were labelled “alarmingly inadequate” by the AFL anti-doping tribunal.
“When it first sort of came in, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it because I have a real fear of needles. I didn’t really want to participate in the program, but I understood that it was something that was being introduced,” Watson said.
“As the captain, a position of leadership, it was important to be behind it as well. When there were concerns raised by players, there was some due diligence, and there were people across it to say: ‘Look, this is something that has been approved, there is nothing that is illegal here and we have a level of comfort from that’.”
Dank, sacked by the Bombers in late 2012, had worked briefly as a part-time consultant with the Gold Coast Suns in the 2011 pre-season, while the Bombers’ new fitness chief Dean Robinson had also been at the Suns and Geelong.
“Given the people that were coming from outside the football club introducing these programs, there was a mentality [that] this is what is going on, and this is the standard practice at other football clubs, given these people had been employed elsewhere,” Watson said.
Watson’s teammate David Zaharakis also had a fear of needles, and did not take part in the program.
When the scandal erupted, the Bombers stood down Robinson, who later successfully sued the club for unfair dismissal for about $1 million.
Watson, who maintains a role on Seven’s footy coverage, said he was confident the players were not administered performance-enhancing drugs, and pointed out there were no positive tests through the week or on game day.
Key players in the Essendon supplements saga: (from left) James Hird, Stephen Dank and Dean RobinsonCredit: The Age
While he said the evidence tabled at the AFL anti-doping tribunal and CAS, and the documents he had signed, provided him with a “level of knowledge”, he still could not say “exactly what I was given”. This aligns with the judgment that initially cleared the players in March 2015 despite finding the players had no actual knowledge of the substances they were given.
“At the time, you are young, you feel like you have got this documentation that you asked for, that was generated by the club, to say that anything that is being administered has been approved by WADA and ASADA. You feel like you have gone above and beyond,” Watson said.
“The other thing that doesn’t make any sense is the administration of the program was so haphazard. If it had been illegal, there would have been a positive test. It wasn’t as if Stephen Dank knew ASADA are coming in to test you on these days, so … don’t come to the club this day.
“He had no records and no diligence around the administration of the supplements or the injections. Therefore, there would be no control or parameters around the testing of them. So the logical outcome is that there would have been a positive test.”
However, this case was ruled an anti-doping rule violation because it related to the use of a prohibited substance, rather than the presence of a prohibited substance, the latter typically proven by an analytical positive test, such as a positive blood or urine test. CAS, after an appeal by the World Anti-Doping Agency, ruled that it was comfortably satisfied that the anti-doping rule violation had occurred.
Watson admitted on Fox Footy’s On the Couch in 2013 that he had been given the anti-obesity drug AOD-9604. WADA had said two months earlier that the drug was banned, although an Australian Crime Commission report was less than clear.
Dank told ABC television’s 7.30 a week after the scandal erupted that there had been no intravenous application of peptides, and that any peptides administered to players were “very, very legal” under the WADA code.
However, in 2015, the AFL tribunal found him guilty of trafficking a number of illicit supplements and banned him from any association with the AFL for life.
While the Bombers were fined $2 million and booted out of the finals in 2013 for bringing the game into disrepute, with Hird handed a one-year ban, Watson said the fondest wins of his career came in that turbulent season.
Hamish McLachlan’s full interview with Jobe Watson can be seen on Unfiltered on Seven on Wednesday, 9.30pm.
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