The Essendon Ban That Reached Rumbalara

Nathan Lovett-Murray had been appointed to coach Rumbalara for the 2016 season when the Essendon supplements case reached him again. On January 12, 2016, the Court of Arbitration for Sport found 34 past and present Essendon players guilty of taking the banned substance Thymosin Beta-4 during the 2012 season. Lovett-Murray was among them. The suspension threatened not an AFL comeback, but his new role in country football.

He had retired from Essendon after the 2013 season, having played 145 games. Rumbalara was already part of his football life: he had played in its 2014 premiership side. Appointed at the end of 2015, he was due to replace another former Essendon player, Damian Cupido, as coach of the Murray Football League club.

The ruling overturned an earlier finding in the players’ favour. On March 31, 2015, the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal found all 34 not guilty of using a banned supplement, concluding there was insufficient evidence to establish doping offences. The World Anti-Doping Agency appealed to CAS, which heard the case in November and delivered its guilty finding in January. Essendon confirmed that the players were suspended for the 2016 season.

The two-year bans commenced on March 31, 2015, with credit for periods of ineligibility already served. Lovett-Murray’s suspension was due to end on December 15, 2016. For Rumbalara, the immediate question was whether it would need a new coach.

The program behind the case had already exposed failures at Essendon. An independent review released in May 2013 described “a disturbing picture of a pharmacologically experimental environment never adequately controlled or challenged or documented within the club”. That review concerned the club’s governance and practices; the later CAS ruling concerned the players’ anti-doping offences.

On the morning of the CAS decision, Lovett-Murray wrote on Instagram: “What a bulls*** decision. We will appeal it if we can if not no footy or coaching for myself this year.”