Today after months of speculation it was finally announced that amongst many other serious consequences, the Essendon Football Club would be forced to give up their place in this year’s AFL finals series as a result of their so-called “drug scandal”. It is clear that this whole saga has been an incredibly touchy topic and through its course it has tarnished the reputations of many significant figures, not to mention that of the game of AFL football itself. With today marking a somewhat conclusion to what has been a painful issue, I feel it is important that attention is turned not only towards the Bombers, but towards the issue of drugs in sport in general.

As a child I viewed sport as something fun to take part in and as something exciting to watch. I loved being active and I aspired towards being like the professional athletes I saw in the media. I feel, as I have gotten older however, that the sporting spirit that I fell in love with has been replaced with a fiery competition based more around money than performance. Today athletes aren’t just competing for a title; they are competing for a living, for sponsorships, for their club’s futures.  With so much more consciously at stake and with technology every day providing new ways to gain a slight edge, in any form, the issue of doping becomes especially relevant.

Doping in sport is by no means a new issue, but it is evident that in the past few years alone we have seen so many of our heroes destroyed as a result. In the midst of the Essendon drama and in the lead up to the IAAF world athletics championships we saw several of the world’s fastest men found guilty drug use, and it was not so long ago that we saw Lance Armstrong torn apart. It is becoming an all to similar story, and the picture being painted as a result is that of the path of success being concurrent with the use of illegal performance enhancing methods. No athlete can be trusted, and successful athletes are now permanently targeted with speculation over whether they are legitimate.

With each new encounter, like that of the Essendon Football Club, the face of sport continues to change, this change not being for the best. The wrong example is being set and above all the health of athletes everywhere is being tampered with. Ultimately, instead of the key to a level playing field being a doping free environment the opposite is becoming true and it is scary to think what this might mean for the darkening future of sport.