Essendon Crisis: What Now?

It is undoubtedly the biggest sports story right now in Australia and the biggest scandal to hit one of Australia's 2 big professional winter sports leagues.

James Hird has been banned for 12 months

It had been brewing some time but the news of Essendon's banishment from the AFL Finals - they would have been 6th - and the AFL Draft for the next two years as well as the ban of coach James Hird for his involvement in the "supplements" scandal at the club is still massive news and a lot to digest and talk about.

Not since the drama surrounding the Melbourne Storm in the 2010 season when the NRL club were stripped of their 2007 and 2009 Premiership titles for massive salary cap breaches, has the Australian media had this much fodder to chew on.

The Storm celebrating their 2009 NRL Grand Final win - it was stripped several months later

Indeed, it is the NRL that seems to have provided all the stories for the likes of Fairfax and APN to chew the cud on - 10 years ago of course, we had the Bulldogs salary-cap scandal which saw them stripped of their minor Premiership and points. And of course there are the new numerous player scandals over the years, e.g. Todd Carney, Greg Bird, Blake Ferguson.

Essendon's drug scandal does pose a wide question for all of Australian sport especially with the likes of Manly, Cronulla and even the much vaunted Olympians, footballers and cricketers, having had contact with the group of doctors that consulted with the AFL club.

A shadow has now been cast over the sporting success that Australia has enjoyed in the last 20 years or so - and perhaps may explain why Australian sport hasn't had much success since the world's attention was turned on performance enhancing drugs globally.

Was Punter doped?

Could the so-called legends like Ricky Ponting and Ian Thorpe have possibly doped to succeed?

In my opinion, no - they are naturally gifted athletes just like Usain Bolt.

Indeed, the spotlight could be on athletes and players of lesser abilities who perhaps feel they needed to dope to beat the best. As Lance Armstrong and his US Postal Service team and the likes of Asafa Powell and Bolt's athletics teammates proved, drugs can turn a lesser athlete into a superhero - Armstrong was never really considered the sort of cyclist who could win 7 Tour de France yellow tops in a row.

Furthermore, Cronulla's lack of success during the time the "drug doctors" were alleged to have been involved does show that doping doesn't quite work on the rugby field.

Nevertheless, it is a sad day for sport not just in Melbourne and Australia but everywhere really.