Stephen Dank, the central figure in the most scandalous drugs case to hit Australian sport, has predicted Essendon players will avoid sanctions but says the ‘‘body count’’ in the supplements saga will grow.
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Dank, the contentious headline act at a fund-raising event for the Riddell Netball Football Club held at Crown on Friday, said he would never co-operate with the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, which is pursuing the biochemist over programs he ran for NRL club Cronulla, and the AFL's Bombers.
"My only discussions with them will be in the Federal Court,'' he said of the national anti-doping agency.
In a 25-minute question and answer segment, Dank also asserted:
■ He and Essendon had complete records of what every player had been administered in the 2012-13 supplements program.
■ That ‘‘for whatever reasons the AFL has decided not to look harder at other clubs’’.
■ He had documents that convinced him AOD-9604 was not a prohibited substance.
■ Shane Charter did not provide any of the substances used in Essendon's program.
■ He felt most sorry for sacked Essendon strength and conditioning boss Dean Robinson.
ASADA is alleging Dank committed more than 30 doping-related violations and has issued him a show cause notice.
The threat of infraction notices still hangs over players and officials of the country’s most popular football codes after the 2013 seasons were spoilt by the supplements scandal.
"There’s certainly been a body count, and I think that there will be further bodies when this is all over,'' Dank said at Friday's event, which was attended by about 750 people.
"And certainly, talking about the Essendon side of things, I think the body count may come further up the chain.''
Dank, who accepted an invitation from former Essendon assistant coach Dean Wallis to speak at the event, said Essendon, and Essendon players, knew precisely what he had prescribed and administered.
While the treatment was described as a poorly monitored pharmacological experiment by former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski, who was commissioned by Essendon last year to report on the situation, Dank insisted it was anything but.
Asked why Essendon had asserted it could not confidently say exactly what drugs players had received, Dank said: ''You’d need to talk to the club, the players and, I guess, the IT department.''
When the recent comments of ex-Essendon player Sam Lonergan were raised by event MC Brian Taylor - Lonergan expressed concern about potential long-term health implications - Dank said: ''I really think it’s, for a couple of different reasons, quite ironic that Sam should be making public comment.''
Despite the fact Essendon’s Brownlow medallist skipper, Jobe Watson, said in a television interview last year that he believed he had received AOD-9604 - and that he believed it was legal - Dank would not confirm whether Watson had been administered the anti-obesity drug. The World Anti-Doping Agency insists that AOD-9604 is prohibited.
Asked why he had refused to co-operate with ASADA, or present his own documentation of Essendon’s program, Dank said the investigation, which was sparked by an Australian Crime Commission report, had become vastly more complicated.
''If this was just a matter of just cleaning up the issue of the supplements from 2012 [at Essendon], we could have had this resolved in six weeks,'' he said. ''Unfortunately, there are quite considerable breaches here of a number of parliamentary acts in relation to this whole investigation.
''This is more than just cleaning up the supplement agenda of 2012.''
Citing the example of retired Geelong player Max Rooke, who was sent to Germany for an intense injection injury treatment, and a Sydney player he did not name but who he said was injected 14 times in the week leading up to a recent grand final, Dank suggested Essendon was not alone in using such methods.
