Drugs in the Australian Football League

World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is the foundation made by the International Olympic Committee in 1999 and its role is to promote, coordinate and monitor drug use within sports.

The main tasks that the agency are involved in are research, education, development of anti-doping bodies and regulating the World Anit-Doping Code.

On Friday 24 August 2007, the Seven Network broadcast details obtained from players' confidential medical records on its nightly news program.

It allegedly purchased these details for $3000 from a woman who found them in a gutter outside a medical clinic in Melbourne – leading to the nickname "Guttergate" for the incident.

[10] Faced with possibility of ongoing player boycotts – including a potential boycott of the following month's Brownlow Medal count, which was televised by Seven[11] – the Seven Network issued a statement regretting any harm the broadcast may have caused to the AFL, the clubs and the players, and promised not to broadcast or reveal any of the details of the medical records in future.

The woman who found the medical records and a male accomplice were charged with "theft-by-finding" and faced Heidelberg Magistrates' Court on 6 December 2007.

[14] They subsequently pleaded guilty and were sentenced to a 12-month good behaviour bond and ordered to pay the money they received from Channel 7 into a court fund.

[15] The most significant doping scandal in AFL history surrounded the Essendon Football Club and the sports supplements program it ran in the lead-up to and during the 2012 season.

Following a long investigation, which began with the club's self-reporting in February 2013, thirty-four Essendon players were found guilty in January 2016 by the Court of Arbitration for Sport of using the banned substance Thymosin beta-4, each receiving a partially backdated two-year suspension which will result in all missing the 2016 AFL season – the decision was subsequently appealed, and was eventually dismissed, by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland.

[16] The club faced severe penalties in August 2013 for the poor governance in which the program was run including its lack of documentation and its questionable hiring practices – guilt related to administering a banned substance had not been established at this point – and the club was penalised with a $2 million fine, a loss of high draft picks in the following two drafts, being omitted from the 2013 AFL Finals Series despite finishing seventh on the ladder, and suspensions to key personnel including senior coach James Hird.

He became able to play on 25 September 2015,[19] and after being delisted by Fremantle at season's end, joined Essendon as a top-up player due to the club's supplements saga.

Two years later in 2013, Saad was delisted from St Kilda after testing positive to a banned stimulant contained in an energy drink which he had taken before a game.