Essendon sports guru denies doping

Former Essendon sports scientist Stephen Dank has denied supplying the Australian Rules club’s players with performance-enhancing drugs — and insisted he ran his supplement programme with the full knowledge of other high-ranking club officials.

The Australian Football League (AFL) confirmed on Sunday that Essendon was under investigation by the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) following a 12-month probe into drug use, match-fixing and links with criminal organisations across a number of sports in the country.

Dank admitted to having “35 to 40” players in his care at Essendon but is adamant he did not prescribe anything which would contravene the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code.

“They had intravenous injections for vitamin B and vitamin C which were quite compliant with the WADA code... nothing else intravenously,” Dank said in a pre-recorded interview with ABC programme 7.30.

“There was no intravenous application of peptides whatsoever.

“The peptides themselves is a fairly broad term, even within the protein powders themselves there could have been anywhere from maybe three to four different peptides that were part of the ingredients... but again (it was) all very, very legal and certainly all within the constraints of WADA.”

Essendon called a press conference last week at which chairman David Evans and coach James Hird admitted their concern over Dank’s involvement with the Melbourne-based outfit and insisted they were unaware of exactly what had been given to their players.

Yesterday Dank, who left the club last year, insisted that was not the case.

“There was a collective involvement — you know it wasn’t just Steve Dank,” he added.

“There was certainly input from people outside myself. There was a very significant involvement from Dean (Robinson) as the high-performance manager, there was detailed discussion with James Hird, there was detailed discussion with the club doctor.”

Dank suggested every AFL club employed high-tech strategies to improve their chances of success.

“You’d be sort of foolish to think that Essendon were the only (club) that were looking at these sort of programmes,” Dank said.

“And I think when you think of what these players do on a week-to-week and a year-to-year basis, I think you’ve got 18 clubs that are all very well coached and obviously all have a very good high-performance unit and they want a cutting edge.”

The ACC report was criticised for not identifying specific targets — sparking fears it was tarnishing a number of clubs and players of both codes. But the National Rugby League yesterday confirmed it had passed on information from the ACC to its clubs under suspicion.