Essendon’s AFL anti-doping tribunal hearing revealed in secret 1294-page transcriptHerald-Sun
August 10, 2015 THE full chaos surrounding Essendon’s injections scandal is laid bare in the top-secret AFL anti-doping tribunal hearings.
The Herald Sun today publishes the 1294-page transcript from 17 days of hearings, lifting the lid on footy’s greatest crisis.
Full transcript here: http://media.heraldsun.com.au/multimedia/2015/aug/project/index4.htmlThe documents reveal that:
PLAYERS suffered painful side-effects from sports scientist Stephen Dank’s program, including aching buttocks throughout the 2012 season.
GEELONG has been formally linked to Dank.
ASADA relied on a witness, “Person A”, whose identity remains hidden.
EVIDENCE from one star Bombers player was dismissed by ASADA lawyers as “unusual”.
ASADA questioned if players “turned a blind eye”, and were not duped.
TRIBUNAL chairman David Jones joked he could use “Dr Dank” to treat his infected leg.
ESSENDON coach James Hird barely rates a mention in proceedings.
The explosive hearings, held from November to March this year, were closed to the media and the public.
The AFL and Herald Sun fought for the case to be open but were denied.
But the extraordinary transcripts have now been obtained by the Herald Sun, raising fresh questions for the game, giving fans a true picture and exposing the challenge facing WADA in its attempt to prove the players’ guilt at appeal.
The Herald Sun has chosen not to identify players, despite them being pictured and named after being cleared.
Accounts of the regimen from 45 Bombers players, read to the tribunal by their legal team, highlight their pain, but also the confusion, during the program.
Not one player could recall the drug they were charged with taking — Thymosin Beta 4.
ASADA’s case was further damaged when its key scientific witness said players were more likely injected with the related but different TB500.
Players at the Bombers in 2012 told how they suffered hot flushes, numb backsides and intense pain during the Essendon injections regimen, and detailed pain, mess and confusion.
Players’ lawyer David Grace, QC, in his closing address to the tribunal, detailed every single player interview, concluding: “You can see how all over the place it was.’’
Supplements scheme architect Dank had told some he was injecting Thymosin, others AOD, others amino acids, some vitamins, melatonin and even “flu boosters’’, Mr Grace outlined.
But none of the players, whom the Herald Sun has chosen not to name, mentioned the banned Thymosin Beta 4.
Both the players’ lawyers and ASADA asserted the program was chaotic during the tribunal.
“HyperMED killed,” transcripts reveal one senior star as saying when quizzed about a visit to that South Yarra hyperbaric chamber for injections. “It was like concrete going into your arse.”
Another player remarked: “Received a hot flush after one of the injections, presumably the melatonin.’’
ASADA prosecutor Malcolm Holmes, QC, told the tribunal that aching bums were a common player ailment across the season.
“A lot of them came out with what they described as a corked buttock, and a lot of them couldn’t walk without pain as a result of those injections,” Mr Holmes declared on day 15 of the hearings.
Player quotes from the transcript. Source: SuppliedOne senior player told investigators the pain in his buttock was so severe he feared he would miss a game.
Mr Grace said of another: “Tore his hammy ... and blamed the injections, so he stopped going’’.
A further player, Mr Grace said, “was offered the injection at HyperMED but didn’t have it ‘because it left the boys’ arses sore’ ’’.
That player was never provided or offered AOD “except in a cream which he tossed out because he didn’t think it would fix his hamstring’’.
In a meeting of the leadership group on January 16, 2012, when the regimen was in its infancy, one senior player let rip, reportedly saying: “What the hell’s this new supplement program that we’re doing? What is it? This injection (expletive), I don’t like it. Where’s it coming from?”
“Dank’s office was disorganised. His office was a mess,” another club leader said.
“If Dank missed you and didn’t come and see you then you basically didn’t get one,” a teammate declared.
Most players admitted having no idea what drugs were being administered to them.
“When I got them you thought they were just vitamin injections to help you with recovery,” said one veteran player.
“He (Dank) would say, ‘Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it helps recovery’,” another teammate said.
The most injections a player reported to ASADA as having was 23 — either in the stomach or the buttock.
“Dank would pull me into his office at times. If I was feeling a bit off I would go and ask for one in the context of talking about vitamins. He would pour from a brown bottle, measure it, pinch you and put it in,” one player said.
Dank did not explain what the substance was, added the player, who guessed he was receiving vitamin B.
“I wouldn’t know, it was an assumption.’’
A teammate said: “Danksy would say, ‘Come and get your vitamins. Gives your immune system a boost’.”
Another player told investigators about an unexpected bonus from the substances that were being injected into his stomach — a gleaming midwinter suntan.
One senior player was, however, flagged for his “unusual” and “inconsistent” evidence to the tribunal.
“We would submit that that evidence is not to be accepted ... it’s inconsistent with the surrounding circumstances leading up to the injections,’’ Mr Holmes said.
Player quotes from the transcript. Source: SuppliedThe potions were kept either in a steel cabinet or in a fridge inside Dank’s Windy Hill office, according to fitness boss Dean Robinson.
Early in the program, Dank had arranged for 46 seven-day pill boxes to be delivered to the club.
One said as the regimen wore on they all “lost faith”.
“It didn’t seem to be working,” he said. “The lack of reporting was a concern ... I think the players started to question it a little bit.”
A text exchange between Dank and one player went like this:
Player: Do I need to have a drip? Haven’t had one this week.
Dank: No, did I inject you this week?
Player: Two Thymos.
Dank: You are done.
Player: Sweet.
The secretive nature of the program was also laid bare, with even other parts of the Essendon Football Club being kept in the dark. It was said this was to protect the intellectual property of the regimen so their competitors wouldn’t rip it off and use it themselves.
One player recalled: “The second form was confidentiality so the three people who facilitated it and the playing group, the 2012 playing group, ... (are) the only ones to know”.
Another said a senior player told him to keep the whole thing under wraps. A third said it was effectively “hidden from view within the club’’.
An email from the club’s HR manager to then football manager Paul Hamilton makes this explicit.
“He has not taken part in full staff meetings and we had mutually agreed not to promote his position at the club to others,” Hamilton wrote of Dank in August 2012.
Mr Holmes told the tribunal six players had admitted to the possibility of receiving injections of Thymosin.
“You add to that three who believed they had been injected with the substance that they consented to ... you then add to that eight who believed they had been injected with amino acids,” Mr Holmes said.
When asked directly about Thymosin, one of Essendon’s star players said: “That name certainly rings a bell.”
Text messages to Dank obtained from two players specifically refer to receiving injections of Thymosin.
But none, when pushed on whether it was Thymosin Beta 4, recalled that substance.
Eleven of the 45 players interviewed by ASADA were not charged, despite some admitting to injections.
The case will be recontested late in the year by WADA at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
TELL A LIE TO GET THE SYRINGESESSENDON’S high-performance coach, Dean Robinson, told an AFL player to lie about why he needed syringes.
While a coach at the Gold Coast Suns, “The Weapon” suggested a player at the club should tell a hospital pharmacy that he needed to buy syringes for his girlfriend — rather than admit that they were for him to inject the banned drug CJC-1295.
“Understanding that stigma can be attached to the use of and obtaining syringes, I told (unnamed player) he may want to say that he was getting them for his girlfriend who had an endocrine disorder, as I had done this when getting the syringes for my wife for her medical needs,” Robinson told ASADA.
Transcripts of the AFL anti-doping hearing reveal Robinson told investigators he had offered CJC-1295 to the player, Campbell Brown and Josh Fraser, describing it to them as an “injectable whey protein”. Brown and Fraser declined.
Robinson claimed sports scientist Stephen Dank had told him the drug was not banned and would help the player with an achilles injury.
Robinson said he had been taking the drug himself, and so had demonstrated to the player how to self-administer.
He described how he gave the drug to the player in a cooler bag packed with dry ice when he came to see him at his home, where Dank had been staying at the time.
Robinson claimed both he and Dank had spoken to the player about the drug, saying he had been told the drug would cost him $800 and last six months if he injected 0.2ml twice a week.
ASADA’s lawyer Malcolm Holmes, QC, told the tribunal that Robinson’s claim that he had discussed the legality of this in person with the club doctor could not be true because the doctor had been working at a local hospital on the day Robinson said the discussion occurred.
It is not clear whether ASADA will take any action over Robinson’s claims.
http://www.news.com.au/national/essendons-afl-anti-doping-tribunal-hearing-revealed-in-secret-1294-page-transcript/story-e6frfkp9-1227476564564
