It was called Australia's darkest day in sport. Columnists openly wept at the loss of innocence, somehow forgetting salary cap breaches, illicit drug use, tanking allegations and match-fixing. Not to forget cricket's Informed Player Management riots in January.
We suggested then that rather than being the worst day in Australian sport it might prove to be one of the best. It was the moment all Australian sporting officials, athletes and fans became aware of an issue with performance-enhancing drugs called peptides. With the enemy identified, troops could be assembled and the battle for good begun.
This news conference on the Thursday was no overreaction for AFL or the NRL. Both codes have problems, though it appears the AFL's vulnerability is not as broad as the league first was led to believe.
The change in rhetoric of AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou from last Friday to Monday this week was marked. On Friday he was begging fans not to run from the sport. He pleaded that the majority of clubs were not infected even though a high percentage were. Three days later Demetriou said the ACC inquiry identified just two clubs with possible peptide issues.
The change in Demetriou's position was driven by the more specific information the league gained from the ACC over the weekend. But the damage to the AFL had already been profound as 16 clubs had been unfairly smeared with the dirty brush of performance-enhancing drugs.
Essendon's mess had already been well documented and another club, which could not be publicly identified, had one player in potential breach of anti-doping rules. Oh, and the league had an illicit drug problem with players. That was hardly news, with the AFL's all-club drug summit barely a week old.
The ACC has not overreacted to Essendon. The club is on the brink with the possibility of a large proportion of its playing list exposed unwittingly to potential breaches of the World Anti-Doping Agency code. It might also lead to a worthy winner of the Brownlow Medal, Jobe Watson, losing claim to the title because, unbeknown to him, he was given an illegal drug or drugs.
The threat to Essendon and the AFL competition is so great you can hardly be guilty of overreacting. Essendon, a foundation club, is struggling to survive and the AFL is struggling to get back on its feet after being all but knocked out last Thursday.
The NRL has serious problems, much deeper than those of the AFL because the competition is far more broadly affected. So there can be no overreaction to that code's calamity. And it would appear from the outside that the common denominator with the codes is supplement supervisor Stephen Dank, but there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing on his part.
All the sports had been briefed by the federal government, the federal police and the ACC on the Tuesday before Thursday's news conference. By Tuesday they had enough information to know that they had to be at Thursday's presser in Canberra, and attended willingly.
But the unforeseen ramifications of Thursday's declaration of war are now starting to become obvious and they are worrying. The reluctance of the legally constrained ACC to talk about specific evidence in specific sports is now beginning to truly damage sport generally.
Initially, the community accepted the ACC's explanation that it could not divulge any information but that it had a lot of evidence that pointed to organised crime infiltrating and despoiling the sanctity of sport, the nation's great love.
As the real targets of the crime bosses are being narrowed down, the community is becoming increasingly incensed that so many other sports have been openly defaced. There is a feeling that the ACC's announcement could have been more cleverly and sensitively handled and that, in parts, the threat to sport in general has been overstated.
The ACC report teases with snippets of suggestions of match-fixing. Soon that is followed by news that $49 million was wagered in Hong Kong on an A-League match between Melbourne Victory and Adelaide. The inference is that so much betting on an Australian domestic soccer game can only mean the fix was on. Not so at all.
Betfair bosses told The Australian yesterday that such figures for a domestic soccer match were unsurprising and not at all considered high.
Betfair turned over the same amount of money on the Andy Murray-Roger Federer semi-final at the Australian tennis Open.
Betfair confirmed that the betting exchange and corporate bookmakers detect very little suspicious betting both globally and locally. They could not speak for illegal bookmakers but in the regulated market there is barely any evidence that would point to possible match-fixing.
Just six days after the ACC stunned the world with its colourful accusations, which were meant to help sport in general fight a previously unknown enemy, the inability to detail their evidence which had been accumulated over 12 months means they have effectively turned the gun on themselves and the innocent.
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