A sordid allegation about what several Sydney Swans players did inside a Melbourne hotel room has come as “no surprise” to the man who blew the whistle on all 18 AFL clubs two years ago.
Sydney stars Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey, James Jordon and Riley Bice have been suspended by the club for the remainder of the AFL season as police investigate a sexual assault allegation from inside a room at the Pullman Hotel on Monday morning.
The five players were stood down for the remainder of the season, including finals, for breaching club expectations in the early hours of Monday morning when they continued drinking and brought several women back to a hotel room.
Heeney is reportedly at the centre of the police investigation into an alleged sexual assault.
While the focus rightly remains on the allegation of sexual assault and the welfare of the woman who made the allegation, details alleging illicit drug use are also filtering through.
According to several police sources who spoke to the ABC, detectives have been told some Sydney players paid adult entertainers to allow them to consume drugs, believed to be cocaine, “from the women’s breasts and buttocks”.
No arrests have been made and none of the five players have been formally interviewed by police.
But Federal MP Andrew Wilkie, who used parliamentary privilege in 2024 to allege the AFL was engaged in a systemic cover-up of illicit drug use, says he is “not surprised that the allegation is now circulating that drugs were being used at the Pullman Hotel by some AFL players”.
Speaking exclusively to news.com.au, the independent MP said the league failed to adequately address his bombshell revelations about illicit drug use, including that “the game has been secretly manipulated by the AFL” and that players were given secret, “off-the-books tests” and told to “fake an injury” if they tested positive.
“In my opinion, the League’s response to my 2024 revelations in the parliament of a secret drug testing regime was defensive and half-hearted,” he said.
“Moreover it then took them the better part of two years to roll out reforms that were well short of what was needed to effectively clean up the sport. Perhaps some players might have figured it was largely business as usual.”
The AFL said at the time that there was not an illicit drug problem in the sport and defended the practice of having doctors test players, but did not respond directly to claims that players faked injuries to cover up test results.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and Sports Integrity Australia (SIA) do not consider illicit drugs “performance-enhancing” and don’t test for them outside match day.
The AFL has a three strikes policy for a player that tests positive to illicit drugs on match days, but players are not named until the second or third strike.
Mr Wilkie, and former Melbourne Demons team doctor Zeeshan Arain, alleged in 2024 that tests were being carried out prior to match day with the aim of protecting a player’s reputation if they tested positive.
“Here is what happens as it has been described to me,” Mr Wilkie told parliament in 2024.
“The AFL wants a player to play at all costs, and so the cover-up begins. If there are no illegal drugs in the player’s system (picked up during alleged off-the-books testing), they are free to play.
“If there are drugs in their system, the player is often asked to fake an injury. They are advised to lie about their condition while the results of the off-the-books tests are kept secret and never shared with Sport Integrity Australia or WADA.
“In other words, hundreds of thousands of Australians will watch the game not knowing that the game has been secretly manipulated by the AFL. Thousands of Australians will also bet on the game not knowing that the game has been secretly manipulated by the AFL.
“So the next time you hear a player has a hamstring injury, you could be forgiven for wondering what’s really going on.”
Dr Arain told Mr Wilkie that multiple players from other teams came to Melbourne “with pre-existing cocaine dependencies more than suggesting that drug testing workarounds are in fact commonplace in the AFL”.
Speaking to news.com.au, Mr Wilkie said that “as a general principle” he supports harm-minimisation “but AFL players are also high-profile role models in our community so should be held to higher standards”.
He also pointed out that his concern and first thoughts are for the safety and welfare of women at all times and “that’s the most important thing to be talking about right now”.
AFL reporter Tom Morris was the first to report allegations of drug use linked to the Swans stay at the hotel on Sunday night and Monday morning.
He said it is “unclear which players were involved” but that “multiple players” were allegedly taking cocaine.
Sydney Swans chief executive Matthew Pavlich was pressed on whether the five players were tested for illicit drugs after police arrived at the Pullman in the early hours of Monday morning.
“Were they tested for illicit drugs?,” Pavlich was asked, but he did not immediately answer the question.
A second reporter followed up, asking Pavlich: “The second part of the question. The drug testing, did you do that on those five players?”
Pavlich said: “That’s potentially part of the police matter which we aren’t going near.”
The drug bombshell from 2024 turned the football world on its head.
Commentator and long-time AFL reporter Gerard Whateley called the revelations “the story you could never prove”.
“As a beat reporter back in the day this was the story you could never prove,” he said.
“High profile player, untimely hamstring injury, lingered longer than might have been anticipated. Suspicions were on every street corner.
“The illicit drugs policy has always been shrouded in secrecy. And the tension piece between player welfare, privileged medical information and brand protection has been a constant debate since it was first introduced.
“It has never won public approval or confidence. But the AFL and players have always been unrepentant about that — sighting a voluntary code with welfare as the principal consideration.
Dr Peter Larkins went a step further, claiming every club doctor had an arrangement with the AFL that players could have positive drug tests covered up.
“This was a system deliberately put in place to assist players to get off the system if they were caught up in societal drug use,” Larkins said at the time.
Then-Swans chief executive Tom Harley addressed the revelations at the time, denying he had ever witnessed doctors lying about injuries.
“The illicit drugs policy in the AFL, we are absolutely all aware that it’s a medical model. We put enormous trust and faith into our medical practitioners and our doctors,” Harley said.
Port Adelaide president David Koch said he was shocked upon hearing the allegations.
“I am absolutely stunned by it,” he told local radio in SA.
“Obviously the AFL will be investigating it closely. To have a deliberate route to avoid testing seems beyond belief to me.”