Ignorance is not an excuse for doping charges by ASADA/WADA in the AFL or any other sport. At the end of the day you and you alone are responsible for why goes into your body so their penalties were absolutely justified.
Hatred of Essendon aside though, I do feel a bit sorry for Jobe and the rest of the players. If you can’t trust your club doctors and high performance team to be doing things by the book and looking after your well-being then who can you trust? Especially for the younger players, can you really expect them to stand up to senior people at the club to question what was being administered to them?
That whole “program” was disgraceful by the bombers. Even if you buy into their story that was being administered was not on the banned substances list and that no player was ever actually tested positive for any banned substance, the whole thing was beyond shady. Going to offsite facilities to get the drugs administered, having massive gaps in their documentation so much so that they didn’t even have records of when and what was being administered.
I didn’t read the one million articles that came out during the time so I’m far from an expert. correct me if I’m wrong on any of the above.
The gaps in documentation were deliberate as part of the cover up.
It's clear as day.
Elsewise, if the program was effective, how would you know what substances to persist with if you don't remember what you gave them? lol