Club bosses told when AFL players have serious drug issues – but coaches stay in the dark
Every AFL and AFLW player will be hair tested twice per year and the identity of players with ongoing serious drug issues will be known by the relevant club’s chief executive, president and football boss under the league’s heavily revamped illicit drug policy.
But the senior coach remains out of the loop for those players who are under drug treatment and have continued to use illicit drugs.
The AFL and AFL Players Association made the announcement about the new policy, which was revealed by this masthead earlier this month, on Thursday.
Players who have serious issues – and who have not overcome their problem with treatment – will face a “fitness to play assessment” and will not be permitted to play until they pass that assessment from an expert panel.
At that stage, the club CEO, president and general manager of football will be informed, but they will be barred from informing others. The exclusion of those club leaders from the knowledge of a player’s drug issues has long been a bugbear of clubs, and especially some outspoken presidents such as Hawthorn’s ex-president Jeff Kennett.
Breaches of confidentiality by those parties (or the club doctor and club psychologist) may bring fines of up to $250,000 for the club, according to the policy.
The method is already followed, less formally, under the AFL’s current system, in which players have taken leave from training and playing without specifying that they have drug issues.
The new AFL illicit drugs policy will feature more “accountability” for players under treatment, even though the AFL has discarded the use of formal “strikes” and moved to a system in which players start a program with the club doctor and club psychologist and then move through phases of treatment.
In the early stages, only the club doctor and club psychologist will be informed of the positive (hair) test. The testing information will not be passed on to other parties, such as Sport Integrity Australia, which administers the entirely separate (WADA) code for performance-enhancing drugs.
The removal of formal strikes from the policy – and its replacement with a series of steps in treatment – ends the pretence that the AFL policy was punitive, when it was almost entirely medically based and about treatment since introduction in 2005.
The AFL’s executive general manager of football operations Laura Kane said players who are deemed unfit to play would be described as “unavailable” without further elaboration.
Communicating why players have been unavailable has been a problem for teams with players whom the AFL has effectively suspended, or sat down, when they have an ongoing drug problem.
Within clubs, there is recognition that many, if not most, key figures would already know the player has a drug problem by the time he reaches the point of being prevented from playing.
Players who test positive via a hair test will have what the AFL termed “a behaviour change assessment” and given an individualised assessment by the club doctor and club psychologist. The AFL has added the club psychologist to help the club medicos, who have previously carried the bulk of the load for handling players who have been found to have used illicit drugs.
In the second phase, a second consecutive positive hair test by a player will progress to “an individual management plan overseen by an AFL IDP (illicit drugs policy) manager”. This phase would include routine testing, treatment and the player would be required to contribute $5000 to the cost of his treatment or $900 for AFLW players.
The player who continues to use drugs after this greater intervention will face the fitness to play assessment, which has three possible outcomes: “fit to play”, then “fit to play or train on stipulated terms”, or “unfit to play or train for a specified period” and subject to “intensive treatment”.
The AFL says the new hair testing will be able to detect drug use for three months, compared to only “a couple of days” for the previous method of urine testing. The expectation, thus, is that there will be more detections and referrals for treatment.
The new program will apply to the AFLW for the first time after the 2027 pre-season and will apply to the AFL men once they all have been hair tested once this year.
“Less will be left to individual club doctors to manage the program,” said AFLPA CEO James Gallagher.
AFL CEO Andrew Dillon said the new policy was “the most stringent illicit drugs policy in Australian sport” and that it was “more comprehensive and rigorous” with mandatory education and hair testing, monitoring and support.
Gallagher and the AFL said the new policy remained a welfare-based one, rather than “punitive”, based on expert advice. “But it is also the most effective way to change behaviour.”
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Jake Niall is a Walkley award-winning sports journalist and chief AFL writer for The Age.Connect via X or email.