Sporting Hero or Zero: Andrew Johns (Australian rugby league "legend")

There has been a lot in the Australian media about Andrew "Joey" Johns and his ecstasy bust in London this month. Not to belittle the situation, it was one tablet and Joey claims that it wasn't his. It is entirely conceivable that it was put in his pocket by someone else as the incident occurred in a crowded London nightclub.

It is a better excuse than that offered by Shane Warne after his doping incident (which I had better state was not an illicit substance, just a drug on the performance enhancing and therefore banned list) when he blamed his Mum. We like to blame our parents for lots of things, that is one thing though that I think would have been better to cop on the chin. Do the crime and do the time. Whatever you do, don't come across as a sook and blame your mother though.

Back to Joey. The following day, he tells all on national television, revealing his sordid history of drug and alcohol abuse. That confession kind of blows the 'someone else put it there' excuse out of the water. Naturally enough, the rugby league world is in turmoil as a result of the revelations and the NRL's administration is in damage control. How is it that our greatest player of the modern era, someone who was expected to be named as an "Immortal" when the Dally M Awards are announced later this year, slip through the cracks so spectacularly? It makes a mockery of the NRL's drug testing protocols that someone could have a habit that everyone in the rugby league world knew about, yet fail to turn up a single positive drug test during a twelve year career.

Simply put, it is a joke. The admission that Andrew Johns had been tested less than twenty times during his career is farcical and doesn't show a real commitment to ensure that the game is clean. It doesn't show any commitment. Then the more unsavoury aspects of the whole drama begin to leak out. That complaints had been made to the NRL and ARL by senior players and there was no investigation. No-one even spoke to the player in question. The argument went that they didn't want to accuse him of something when there was no evidence (other than rumour and innuendo). Surely it wouldn't have hurt to just pull the player aside and ask, "Look Joey, we're hearing some pretty disturbing rumours flying around about you being involved with drugs. Is there any truth to them?" There is also plenty of suggestion that the NRL and/or ARL was fully aware of the

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