BY JANUARY 2012, Reid was very worried.
A club veteran, he had never seen anything like it and he was in the dark on too many important details.
When he heard players had been injected — without his knowledge — with a relatively unknown anti-obesity drug called AOD-9604, he hit the roof.
As far as he knew, the players had been getting vitamins and amino acids only.
“If we are resorting to deliver this altered growth hormone molecule, I think we are playing at the edge and this will read extremely badly in the press for our club … I have trouble with these drugs,” he wrote in letter to Hird and Essendon’s then football manager Paul Hamilton on January 17.
He went on to slam as “ludicrous” the use of calf’s blood as a recovery agent, saying it was based on “flimsy evidence”.
“I am sure Steve Dank believes that what we are doing is totally ethical and legal, however, one wonders whether if you take a long stance and look at this from a distance, whether you would want your children being injected with a derivative hormone that is not free to the community.”
But Doc Reid wasn’t the only Essendon health professional suspicious of the program.
When Robinson presented Hird with a copy of an academic paper co-authored by Dank about a supplement called Lactaway, the club dietitian took issue with it almost instantly.
Benita Lalor doubted whether the substance was effective and cautioned that it might even cause muscle damage.
An obviously frustrated Hird emailed a colleague: “This is what we are dealing with.”
For all his zeal, Hird did show restraint, issuing an email saying the program should not harm players and should comply with anti-doping rules.
But, according to Ziggy Switkowski’s review of the program, there was no real follow-up or monitoring to check these ground rules were ever followed.
Along the way, there were plenty of signs things were heading down a potentially dangerous path.
Hird suffered side effects after injecting himself with the Melan otan II allegedly given to him by Robinson. That was early in the piece — as far back as October 2011.
Hird had allegedly received vitamin injections and tablets — likely ephe drine and pro panol — himself.
Even Reid, the author of that explosive letter, was present when players later received the very treatments he had criticised.
IN FEBRUARY 2012, 38 players signed consent forms explaining to them what substances they would receive and instructing them to keep it all on the low-down.
According to the season-long supplement schedule, they were to receive an extraordinary 1500 j abs of AOD- 9604 and a substance described on the forms only as “thymo sin”.
On top of that, they would get 16,500 doses of colo-strum and 8000 doses of tri-bulus.
But the drug-fest didn’t end there. At least one player was given TA65, an anti-ageing tablet obtained from a clinician in South Yarra.
By March, players were being injected offsite — over the road, across town and eventually interstate.
Across the road from Windy Hill was a clinic called Skinovate, then run by a cosmetic doctor named Paul Spano.
There, drips — which had not been approved by Reid — were loaded with vitamin C and B were jammed into the veins of the players.
In all, Skinovate allegedly billed 155 IV treatments to the Bombers.
None of this amounted to doping, of course, and Dank and Hird spoke about it freely by text.
“All IV and injections completed,” wrote Dank.
Hird replied: “Great work mate, it would be a great effort to have them feeling fresh for Anzac Day.”
During a team trip to Queensland, a few players were taken to a clinic in the Gold Coast hinterland and given vitamin B and Acto-vegin. Reid was there.
In April, players and staff visited a chiropractor named Mal Hooper at his clinic, Hypermed, in South Yarra. There, they received 112 “amino acids” injections and 32 jabs of cere-brolysin, an anti-Alzheimers drug.
They also allegedly got injected with the mystery amino acid borrowed from a muscular dystrophy patient who got it in some pharmacy in Mexico.
All these off-site injections had the bespectacled Reid very concerned. By May, Dank had been told to stop.
But for three more months, until early August, the jabs continued.
By now, there was evidence Dank was trying new types of supplements.
WHEN a wave of soft tissue injuries struck the club, Hird asked his sports scientist for clues.
In April, he texted Dank: “Why do you reckon we are getting all the injuries?”
Dank said: “I need to use much more placental cells and Acto-vegin ... West Coast, Hawthorn and Collingwood’s tissues are biologically advanced. We need to change our biology for a little while.”
A text exchange shows that around this time, Dank had turned to a Melbourne pharmacist for help with the team’s soft tissue injuries.
The pharmacist suggests trying a new mixture, to which Dank replies: “Perfect, let’s get going. Have we tried it on anyone yet?”
Pharmacist: “Few dental injections for periodontal sockets but not for sporting.”
Dank: “Let us test a couple of players.”
It seemed Dank saw the whole thing as one big experiment in which these young players were used as guinea pigs.
When Dank moved to AFL from NRL, he told a former colleague he’d intended to “revolutionise” Australian Football.
He’d talk about which NRL players he thought he could turn into AFL stars, or in his words “prototypes”.
Dank had co-authored a number of academic papers. An academic colleague remembers his eccentric manner, his bad suits and his thirst for scientific knowledge.
“His academic credentials were a bit vague but what he does demonstrate is a real intellect and capacity for knowledge in different areas,” the colleague told the Herald Sun.
There is no suggestion any of this was malicious. In fact one source likened Dank’s activities to the man who created the nuclear bomb — he was so consumed by the science he perhaps failed to stop and think about the ethics.
ALL UP, ASADA identified 75 different substances as relevant to their Operation Cobia probe into possible doping in the NRL and AFL.
Most of the substances known to have been used at Essendon were not banned under anti-doping rules.
But there were others — like the mysterious Mexican concoction and the abbreviated “thy-mosin” on the consent forms — that still have everyone guessing.
Then there is the gear, like hexarelin, that doping investigators suspect may have been used on players, but cannot prove.
If Essendon is next week found to have committed doping violations, it will be because ASADA was able to persuade the tribunal the “thy-mosin” on the consent form was a reference to Thy-mosin beta 4 — a WADA-banned type of the drug commonly used on horses.
http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/essendon-drugs-saga-how-stephen-dank-ran-the-controversial-supplement-program/story-fndv8gad-1227281669383
