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When the decision from the Court of Arbitration for Sport came down, Jobe Watson wasn’t thinking of his Brownlow Medal. Others were. It had been a significant conversation in scenario planning at the AFL and a question long mulled over at Essendon.
With a decision wiping out the 2016 season for the active players among the Essendon 34 – a dozen of them still on the Bombers’ list at the time – it was understandable the captain was more concerned with his then-teammates and past players.
In the immediate aftermath of one of the most significant days in Australian sport, the individual consequences were overwhelmed by the team impact.
“The Brownlow was probably more a question as the year went on, where it started to become more front-of-mind for me, I guess, when the realisation of what that might look like, and what the consequences of the result were, became clearer. But it wasn’t something I thought about immediately,” Watson said.
“It was like a wound that was festering, you know. You get to a point where you accept that you can’t play for 12 months and that’s the reality of your situation. And so you can dwell and mope about that, or you can move forward.
Watson on Brownlow night in 2012. Credit: Paul Rovere
“But the Brownlow was a part of that, that was this wound that wouldn’t heal, that was still infected, and it was just sort of getting more and more infected as the year went on. That was how it felt.
“It was something that was still there and no one really had any clear picture of what it would look like, and that wasn’t communicated to me until the end of the year, really, and so that just felt like something that was festering.”
The Brownlow Medal, the Essendon captaincy and the Watson family name meant Jobe carried much of the focus of the suspension.
Being forced to hand back a Brownlow for the doping offence was an additional punishment of sorts.
Watson during his time in New York.Credit: Domain
Ten years on from the day the 34 players were suspended – January 12, 2016 – Watson is now at peace with what happened. Since his retirement in 2017, he has lived, and started a cafe business, in New York, where he met his wife, Virginia, and is now managing director of Watson Property Advisors in Melbourne. He has stayed connected with football as a special comments pundit on Channel Seven.
But with three primary school-aged children, he admits he has wondered how he will discuss what happened once they are old enough to understand.
“It’s an interesting question and something that I have thought about occasionally. At the moment I don’t think they actually believe that I played,” he said.
“But I think that I’ll just explain to them that, sometimes, there’s things out of your control and all you can do is deal with the scenario that you’re faced with. I’ll say that I don’t believe I did anything wrong, I don’t believe that I cheated the system, but other people found that we did. I don’t think that that is an unreasonable position to be in.
“You can believe that you didn’t do something wrong when someone else finds that you have. But you can dwell on that and that can be the story of your life, or you can move on from it.
“There’ll be times, and I think that I’ll say this to my kids, when people do things to you that you think are unfair, or you don’t think are right, and you can carry that for the rest of your life and have it be the way in which you approach all things in life, and it’ll dictate how you live the rest of your life, or you can accept it and move on.
“It takes time, but time heals everything, you know.”
Watson with his daughter and the horse he part-owns, Annavisto, at Flemington in 2023. Tom Bellchambers and Cale Hooker are also part-owners.Credit: Getty Images
Five years ago, Watson said, a conversation about the Brownlow would be raw.
“It was deeply painful to have to give the Brownlow back,” Watson said. “But, you know, it’s life – you can move on from it. It was just an award.
“I often get asked, ‘How do you feel about it?’ And I say, ‘Look, I have incredible memories about the experiences of winning the Brownlow Medal’. I got to celebrate it with my mum and dad at the event. I had all my family and friends come afterwards and celebrate it with me. I had a week of celebrations with all my friends. They still talk about it now. And for me, the whole experience of winning the medal is one of joy and recognition of the effort and the work that was put in. Now there’s parts of it that were painful afterwards, but the experience of it at the time, I still look on it fondly.”
Another regular question is why the players did not challenge the sport science staff when they were getting injections in the stomach in the office of a sports scientist.
In the players’ eyes, there was no reason to resist. They believed club leaders from the coach and football manager to the club doctor knew players were being injected, and they were assured there was nothing untoward.
As then-CEO Ian Robson said in announcing his resignation: “We let down our players and their families … There is no excuse in not knowing [what happened] and as CEO, I am accountable.”
The CAS found that explanation understandable but unsatisfying, given that none of the players had listed injections of thymosin on declaration forms during drug testing.
Watson’s current attitude to the entire process is different to what it was. For a long time, it was too raw to discuss in detail. Now he is more phlegmatic, not wishing to have it define the remainder of his life as it marked his playing career.
“Now I look back at it and there’s still disappointment and frustration about the whole scenario, and what it did to players’ careers, what it did to my career, what it did to the environment that we had created. And I think that that is something that is just part of the experience. It’s not something that I dwell on,” he said.
“The frustration of what was allowed to take place while we were at the club, and then the consequences of that, and the way in which those consequences played out, and the length of those consequences, and what that meant for players’ careers, and the length of time that it took to play out.
“I guess I still hold to the evidence. I don’t think that I’m ignorant or naive to the evidence, either, because I absorbed it all and was participating in it to a degree with providing evidence, but also actively reading and collecting the evidence through transcripts. So I think that there’s still a level of frustration about what was put forward, and then the consequences of that evidence and the judgment that was found.
“I think that the consequences, and this is true in life, all facets of life, is that whatever happens to you is felt more by the people around you than it is by you. And that’s with everything – illness, tragedy, anything like that. And it’s the same for us, and it’s the same for my parents. It’s the same for family members. It’s the same for the family members of all the other players.”
‘It’s been an anchor for the club’
The impact of the doping saga was profound. It divided groups within the club. Its impact on the players and the on-field performance was significant. It is not the only reason Essendon have been poor on the field in the past decade, but it has had a lasting impact.
“I think it’s been an anchor for the club from that period on,” Watson said.
“And not only the financial. The team that we had formed at that period of time was looking like a very strong side, a very talented side, and players left because of the direct consequence of what had happened. And we lost good players, but we also lost momentum, and we lost the ability for 12 months of footy to improve and play together and then to have to come back and try again.”
But, as Watson explained, it wasn’t only the season of the suspensions that was impacted.
“It’s also the 2012 season was a difficult season because you’re dealing with the actual people there and their erratic behaviour. The 2013 season was affected because of what happens with the investigation. The ’14 season is affected because you lose one coach and another coach comes in. The ’15 season is affected because you’ve got the hearing, [and] then you’ve got the appeal. And then the ’16 season is affected because you’re out, and then the ’17 season’s affected because you’ve missed 12 months of footy.
“So it’s not only like you missed 12 months of footy and it was fine. That’s the frustration, and the thing you’re probably most angry about as a player, is that there’s a five-year period of your career that has been affected.
“There’s guys who are your teammates, who came into the club in 2012 who left in 2015 or ’16, and their whole experience was this chaos and that’s what they think football was, or that was their reality ... And that’s really sad for the guys who were trying to live their dream, and it was through no fault of their own. Their whole experience in the AFL system was that period.
“So I think that the anchor that I’m talking about was that the club and the playing group had been primed, and it was a five-year period of disruption, and that then caused the profile of the list to be drastically changed.”
Then-Essendon president Lindsay Tanner on the day the players were suspended.Credit: Getty Images
Former Essendon president Lindsay Tanner agrees, noting also the impact of the lost draft picks from the AFL punishment. These are players who, had the Bombers chosen correctly at the draft, would be in their peak playing years now.
“I think you would have to say that the impact of the whole issue across on-field outcomes was significant, but there are bigger factors in play, like at the end of the day we make choices as a club about recruiting players, drafting players, signing coaches, assistant coaches,” Tanner said.
“I wouldn’t want to put it all down [to the CAS decision]. But it’s definitely not irrelevant.
“The point I have made countless times to members was, yes, there are various aspects of this whole saga that I think were completely outrageous and unfair, but never forget that if we had run the club correctly, none of them would be happening.
“So the consequences that we are living through, painful though they are, [are] all consequences that we have effectively brought upon ourselves.”
Read part one of this two-part series here.
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