AFL is left with no choice, JobeJon Ralph
Herald-Sun
January 26, 2016IMAGINE the outcry if the Court of Arbitration for Sport or International Olympic Committee allowed Russian walker Sergey Kirdyapkin to keep his London 2012 gold medal.
That ruling would deny Australian Jared Tallent his deserved — yet belated — Olympic gold medal and turn sport into a laughing stock again.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport has already ended Jobe Watson’s chances of competing this year, with its ruling on the Russian drug cheat to be announced in coming weeks.
Watson has the chance to plead his case at a February 15 AFL Commission meeting which will then rule on his 2012 Brownlow Medal.
AFL identity Jeffrey Browne tells the Herald Sun Watson losing his medal would be a “pinnacle of injustice”.
Yet surely this is the only simple decision in three years of dense, complicated arguments over the fate of the Essendon 34.
If the highest court available to world sport finds you guilty of drug-cheating, you can’t keep a Brownlow Medal won that same year.
No matter how good a bloke you are. Or how heart-wrenching a decision this must be for the AFL Commission.
Under the new WADA code Watson would automatically lose all awards won, but the applicable version from the 2012 season says he should lose it “unless fairness requires otherwise”.
If Watson and his colleagues had won a “no significant fault” discount and received a reduced sanction, the AFL might theoretically have some wriggle room.
But if we are to be a signatory of WADA, we can’t pick and choose when to apply its rules.
James Hird argued with bizarre logic in his baffling ABC interview the AFL Tribunal found players not guilty so he would simply ignore the CAS founding.
It isn’t open to the AFL Commission to do the same, just as they couldn’t ignore the banning of those 17 current AFL-listed players.
No one in this saga has acted with more fortitude, more care to his teammates, more courage under fire than Jobe Watson.
And as his dad Tim Watson said of his son’s Brownlow Medal, it isn’t the only thing in his life.
“To me the Brownlow doesn’t define Jobe, and I’m talking as a father now,” said Watson.
“We didn’t love him any more because he won the Brownlow and we wouldn’t love him any less if he lost the Brownlow.”
But CAS made a compelling case that Essendon’s players were not only guilty, they were in ASADA boss Ben McDevitt’s words “complicit in a culture of concealment”.
According to McDevitt, they hid injections from their doctor and ASADA, made no inquiries about the substances to ASADA, and had a “fatal” lack of curiosity.
It just doesn’t give the AFL Commission any possibility of allowing Watson to retain his medal.
One theory being pushed is that the AFL would leave the 2012 Brownlow Medal vacant rather than hand it to the pair of 2012 runners-up.
Yet the Brownlow Medal has a precedent of retrospectively handing out Brownlows.
There is no precedent for the stripping of a Brownlow, yet there is no good reason why two players — Hawk Sam Michell and Tiger Trent Cotchin — who have already been awarded votes wouldn’t inherit the award.
They will both have bittersweet emotions if they inherit the award from a respected foe.
Yet in less than three weeks they could share an unusual bond as retrospective Brownlow Medallists as Watson attempts to rebound from one final kick to the pavement.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/jobe-watson-brownlow-ralphy-says-under-wada-rules-essendon-champ-has-to-lose-highest-accolade/news-story/8178dfe3921595169d800090d53c8321
