Latest news with #NationalAnti-DopingScheme
The Guardian
01-04-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Sarah Benson: from a PhD in explosives to overseeing integrity in Australian sport
Sarah Benson is the forensic scientist who has been appointed sport's top cop as chief executive of Sport Integrity Australia. Her CV includes working on federal police responses to the Bali bombings, the downing of MH17 in Ukraine and the volcanic eruption on New Zealand's White Island. That experience prepared the 47-year-old for a not-straightforward initiation, where she found herself at the centre of the ferocious debate around illicit drugs in sport just as the AFL and the code's players were finalising an update to the controversial 'three-strike' policy. An Australian National Audit Office report into SIA's operations published four weeks ago found the AFL had sent a list of 51 players to SIA for targeted testing – without saying why – sparking friction between the league and the AFL Players' Association and prompting AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon to publicly deny any player privacy had been breached. The saga heightened suspicions within the players' union and put on hold discussions around the new illicit drugs policy, but Benson said on Monday – two weeks after her appointment, and having acted in the CEO role for eight months – there was nothing unusual about the list. 'It's considered best practice that we work with sports, and part of working with sports is they may provide us a list, particularly where they've got their own integrity unit,' she said. The audit report also declared SIA's management of the National Anti-Doping Scheme was only 'partly effective', and that the organisation was at risk of 'regulatory capture' by the commercial sports. Benson said she supported the audit process and it was aligned with a commitment to improvement within her organisation – set up in 2020 from Asada and previously disparate government sport integrity functions – but declared any suggestion that SIA was not independent to be incorrect. 'Whilst there's commentary that as a regulator we might be unduly influenced if a sport provides us a list of names, it is very clearly articulated in the Wada [World Anti-Doping Agency] international standard for testing and investigation that each organisation must plan and execute a testing plan, which is proportionate to the risk of doping,' she said. SIA carries out testing of athletes on a 'user pays' basis with major professional sports, after working with officials to develop a testing plan, and charges fees for tests undertaken. The organisation collected 316 samples from AFL players across 2023 and 2024, compared to 333 for players in football and 718 from those in NRL. But the audit report said testing in Australian rules and rugby league had 'deficiencies' including limited out-of-season testing. 'In context of the [audit] recommendations, part of the negotiations and discussions with sports would be to revisit the numbers and make sure that the numbers are proportionate to the risks, so that will be something that we look at,' Benson said. Sign up to Australia Sport Get a daily roundup of the latest sports news, features and comment from our Australian sports desk after newsletter promotion The ANAO report is the first high-profile challenge for Benson at the helm of SIA, but she was no stranger to sport even before joining the agency in 2023. 'The Olympics is the only reason I actually got the job in the AFP, I was second choice on a recruitment list,' she said. 'Late in 1999, because the AFP wanted to set up a national security and explosives capability to protect the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, I got a job to build that capability,' she said. After completing PhD research in man-made explosives, Benson worked for the AFP for more than two decades, rising to chief forensic scientist. She was involved the organisation's response to many of the harrowing international disasters that affected Australians during that time, including the White Island eruption in 2019. Benson recalls a family member of a person who had died expressing gratitude for returning the victim's body in time for Christmas. 'It highlights the point that everything we do at any point in time has an impact on an individual or beyond, and that we need to – where we can – operate with speed but also accuracy, and I think balancing those two translate into the sport integrity world as well,' she said. In 2024, SIA managed over 250 child safeguarding or discrimination complaints across more than 50 sports, and in the six-month period up to February 2025 child safeguarding concerns accounted for every complaint investigated. Benson said progress had been made to ensure children are safe in sporting settings, including having 32 integrity managers in place, but the safeguarding framework was still 'maturing'. 'I think we're in a good place in Australia, but there's still work to be done,' she said.
The Guardian
05-03-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
AFL expects northern clubs to earn their keep but familiar problems remain
The answer was obvious but telling. As Andrew Dillon prepared for his second season as AFL chief executive, he was asked by a reporter who he thought would win the premiership this year, as he launched the 2025 season in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Monday. 'I think it's hard to go past the two teams in Sydney,' the trained lawyer said. Brisbane won last year's premiership, perfectly complementing the AFL's national growth strategy. The northern clubs have been given a leg up by hosting opening round matches – despite Tropical Cyclone Alfred's interruption this year – and hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into programs in non-traditional markets. Yet as the most recent two expansion sides enter their adolescence in 2025, it's starting to sound like Dillon wants them to earn their keep. 'We want to grow our crowds to over 10 million [within three years], we want to grow our participation from 600,000 to a million by 2033, so we've got a lot of work to do,' Dillon said this week, reiterating that AFL in NSW and Queensland is – rather than matches in New Zealand, China or, heaven forbid, Las Vegas – the league's focus. Gold Coast are expected to compete for their first finals berth this season, as observers closely monitor what a successful Suns side can do for the long-derided franchise. But Greater Western Sydney – as 2019 grand finalists and the team which should have knocked out the Lions in last year's finals series – have long been competitive. Yet western Sydney, the home of one-tenth of Australia's entire population, remains largely foreign territory for the native game. The capitulation by the Giants against the Lions last September, after they lead by as much as 44 points before losing in the final minutes, was made worse by the empty seats at Engie Stadium behind the goalposts laid siege by Joe Daniher. The Giants are expected to sell out this year's opening round clash at Engie Stadium against major drawcards Collingwood, as they did last year, but their fate in 2025 – already 17 years after the AFL decided to push into rugby league heartland and as head office doubles down on local growth – serves as one pivotal moment among many for the national game in 2025. The illicit drugs policy remains in negotiation between the league and the AFL Players Association after the scandals of last year. Performance-enhancing drugs have emerged as an issue too, after an Auditor-General report into Sport Integrity Australia's management of the National Anti-Doping Scheme was released on Monday. It stated the AFL provided a list of 51 'target athletes' for drug testing, 'that did not include information on the reason', and also criticised the AFL for not having plans to test AFL players out of competition or in pre-season. Integrity concerns have been heightened by the growing normalisation of betting, as the AFL seeks to have gambling companies pay for a system to improve oversight and address the kind of bet-fixing that was alleged last year in the A-League Men and is still working its way through the courts. Class actions around both racism and concussion remain on foot, and this week St Kilda great Nicky Winmar added his name to the suit alleging the AFL failed to protect players from racist abuse. There are also outstanding issues outside the courtroom on how the game deals with head injuries. Oversight of the AFL-supported brain injury initiative remains in limbo three years after it was announced, and 12 months after the Shane Tuck inquest concluded the league is yet to progress a recommendation to consider guidelines that limit the number of contact training sessions. On the field, players will be judged harshly on homophobia as the game still grapples with outdated views. No male player has come out as gay in AFL history, and head office issued a succession of suspensions for homophobic slurs last year in a blunt attempt to bring about cultural change, including a three-week ban for Port Adelaide's Jeremy Finlayson and a five-match sanction for Gold Coast's Wil Powell. The slow growth of the AFLW remains a headache for officials, and the league appears committed to a late winter/spring women's season for the foreseeable future. Yet Adelaide star Ebony Marinoff has recently called on the league to bring AFLW forward to the start of the year, and help female players harness the footy enthusiasm earlier in a season that by December struggles to keep many fans engaged. Sign up to From the Pocket: AFL Weekly Jonathan Horn brings expert analysis on the week's biggest AFL stories after newsletter promotion The AFL has said it plans to use scheduling, marketing, and the match-day experience to drive attendance at women's matches this year as it chases a double-digit percentage increase in AFLW crowds, which currently average less than 3,000. This year will also provide an early indication about the impact of the new broadcast agreement, which has scrapped Saturday live matches on free-to-air in Victoria and Tasmania. Responding to the backlash this week Dillon highlighted that, although Saturdays were largely behind a paywall, there will be more Thursday night football on Seven than before. 'The amount of games on free-to-air nationally this year will be exactly the same as what it's always been, but what we have done is listen to the fans,' Dillon said. One outcome of that decision – apart from an increase in Kayo sign-ups – might be that more fans are compelled to get to games on Saturdays, helping Dillon's organisation reach its annual attendance goal of 10m. An alternative is the breaking of weekend traditions in the AFL heartlands leaves a giant scar on the game's long-term health, that even the best efforts in Campbelltown and Carrara cannot heal.
