Joel Smith knows exactly what it’s like to be at the centre of a major AFL controversy.
The former Melbourne Demons utility used cocaine in the lead-up to a round 23 match against Hawthorn in 2023 before he got a “tap on the shoulder” from a drug-tester that changed the trajectory of his life forever.
“Oh f***, I think I’m in trouble here,” is the way he remembers the immediate next moments.
The rising star, who had been drafted in 2015 to follow in his famous, high-flying father’s footsteps with the Demons, was banned for four years.
He will be 31 when the ban ends.
Illicit drugs in the AFL are this week back in the news amid reports that several Sydney Swans players were allegedly snorting cocaine off the bodies of adult entertainers inside a Melbourne hotel room after their match against Essendon last Sunday.
Isaac Heeney, Nick Blakey, Chad Warner, Riley Bice and James Jordon have been suspended by the Swans for the remainder of the 2026 season and their future in the league is in jeopardy.
The quintet were banned for breaching club expectations by drinking, staying out late and bringing women back to the hotel to continue partying well after 5am.
Three women have made sexual assault allegations and Victoria Police are investigating, but at the time of publishing none of the Sydney players have been formally interviewed by police or charged.
The police investigation into the allegations of sexual assault could take months.
It has rightly been the foremost concern for the club and the AFL.
But the drug-taking allegations are another unwelcome development for the league which is still recovering from a bombshell report tabled in 2024 that alleged it was engaged in a systemic cover-up of illicit drug use.
Joel Smith’s father is Shaun Smith, the Melbourne Demons icon who in 1995 used teammate Gary Lyon as a literal launching pad to take what is widely regarded as mark of the century.
He says his first reaction to what is alleged to have happened inside the Pullman Hotel where the Swans were camped last Sunday is: “Are you for real?”
“That was my initial thought. I just think, yeah, that’s 1980s stuff,” he told news.com.au this week.
The AFL’s alleged illicit drug problem that snared his son in 2023 was never addressed, he says, despite Independent Federal MP Andrew Wilkie blowing the whistle a year later when he revealed “the game has been secretly manipulated by the AFL” and players were given secret, “off-the-books tests” and told to “fake an injury” if they tested positive.
Smith says “Blind Freddie could see” that cocaine use is rife.
“I never really saw drugs when I was playing. Guys were more just getting on the froths.
“When Joel tested positive, the club just blamed him and went, ‘He’s gone, it’s all fixed’. But it clearly wasn’t so that’s where I get my nose out of joint.
“There’s a massive issue with drug culture in the AFL. You’d be naive to think the AFL doesn’t know what’s going on. You’ve got a lot of guys who are really cashed up. It’s easy to do. You can just buy the stuff.
“If they’re really serious about fixing the drug culture, they’d drug test everyone weekly. But it boils down to money and confronting the problem. If they did that, they would very, very quickly not have a competition (because so many players would test positive).”
Smith says he had no idea how bad it was when his son was taken with the 41st pick in the 2015 Rookie Draft, following in his footsteps.
He says he would have steered him in a different direction. Instead, he feels like he walked into a “lion’s den”.
The initial fallout for Joel was brutal. It was headline-making news for the league and left the then-29-year-old on the outside of the league during his prime years.
But his dad says he’s never been prouder.
“In a weird way, I’m glad it happened to Joel. He grew up overnight. They way he’s handled himself, I’m very, very proud of him,” Smith told news.com.au.
“He didn’t blame anyone else. He blamed himself, moved on and he’s really become a better person. He’s a better human and if he was still at Melbourne he’d probably still be doing the drug and could be in a really bad way.
“As a parent, that might seem really weird but I’m glad. It put a stop to something that I wasn’t aware of. We think we know our kids but we’re not with them 24/7.
“I can’t stress how proud I am of the way he’s gotten on with his life. He’s got two kids and whether he returns to footy or not — it would be good if he could but I couldn’t give a shit to be honest.”
He finds it hard to watch senior figures within Sydney and the AFL baulk at questions about whether the Swans players should have been drug tested in the hours after police were called to East Melbourne last Monday morning.
“Why weren’t they drug tested? If the club is serious, they’d say, ‘We’re going to drug test them’.”
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.”
It happened again on Monday when AFL CEO Andrew Dillon defended not testing the Swans players despite serious allegations of illicit drug use.
“Have you or will you seek hair tests from the five players mentioned?” Dillon was asked.
“Those matters at the moment are under the police investigation, so the AFL won’t be conducting any of its own inquiries,” Dillon said.
A reporter asked whether he “concedes that there is a time factor” … “in that if this police investigation runs for months and the AFL isn’t going to move until that wraps up, that there are actually time constraints?”
“Yeah, it is, but it’s really important and a really serious matter and the AFL can’t get in the way of the police investigation.”
News.com.au spoke with Andrew Wilkie last week about his 2024 revelations and what he thinks about fresh allegations of illicit drug use involving Swans players.
He 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.”
Joel Smith, speaking to media for the first time since he was banned, told Fox Sports in 2025 that he’s moving on.
“I just had to cop my whack, and (now I’m) just moving on with my life, staying happy, healthy, and then whenever I can play footy again … I won’t make that mistake ever again, take that for a fact.”
Originally published as ‘Scapegoat’: AFL legend can’t believe what he’s seeing with Swans saga