AFL clubs might need to ask for compensation if they cannot test trade prospects for drug useMichelangelo Rucci,
Chief Football Writer,
The Advertiser
23 August 2017CAVEAT emptor ... buyer beware. This is the theme every AFL list manager and recruiting chief should remember in October when working the player trade market.
Yes, it is possible — most prudent — and accepted as the norm to send a prospective recruit to the club doctor to have his shoulders, knees, ankles, hamstring and back checked. Even his eyes. After all, it is the trade period is known as the “meat market”.
But no, as serious as the need is today, there is no avenue for asking a player to subject himself to a drug test. And there is no recourse if, as Richmond has learned with Chris Yarran, the player has a drug issue or strikes against his name.
So it is buyer beware. And it is highly unlikely this will change, regardless of the debate that begins with the Yarran case.
Certainly the players’ union — the AFL Players’ Association — would never push for change. It has engineered a drug policy that is a “welfare” system for its members. It will not allow these drug tests to limiting the players advancing to a new deal at a new club.
Everything about the AFL illicit drug policy — which the players remind all is taken up on a voluntarily rather than a edict from AFL House — is about confidentiality. And helping any player who falls in to the social drug cycle to find his way out with public shaming.
There is no chance of the players endorsing drug checks be added to medical tests during the trade period. More so if a club immediately stops trade talks after testing a player for drugs. The confidentiality — that the experts say is paramount to ensure successful rehabilitation from social drugs — would be blown.
So list managers and recruiting chiefs need to be diligent in their study of a players’ football ability — and his lifestyle off the field.
Chris Yarran in action for the Swan Districts reserves side in the WAFL. Picture: Daniel Wilkins
Yarran was released by Carlton to Richmond — for draft pick 19 — in the hectic last hours of the 2015 trade period. His manager Paul Connor says he did not know of Yarran’s drug problem (with ice) as he made the move from Princes Park to Punt Road. Carlton is equally adamant it had no insight to Yarran’s woes.
If there was a positive test on Yarran’s record it was known by the drug testers, the AFL medical officer and, on multiple strikes, the Carlton team doctor charged with making sure the 2010 Rising Star nominee was in rehabilitation sessions.
Yarran has not played an AFL game for the Tigers. And he continues to eat into Richmond’s salary cap by the contract he signed on being traded by Carlton.
There is no fallback point for the Tigers through the AFL system. No tribunal to hear a case on why the Tigers should be handed a compensation draft pick for misjudging Yarran’s soundness for AFL football.
But perhaps there should be. Again such a hearing would destroy the confidentiality that allows a player to make a full recovery. Although in this case it is Yarran who has put his drug issues to Richmond — after being traded — and later on the public record.
For now, the best advice is — buyer beware.
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