Andrew Demetriou has used one of his last public appearances as AFL chief executive to deride controversial sports scientist Stephen Dank.
Speaking at Tuesday night’s Integrity In Sport Forum, Demetriou said there was a place in sport for science, but it must not have too much influence.
He then made a point of mentioning Dank, who is a central figure in the ongoing ASADA investigations into Essendon and Cronulla.
“To this day, I’m not quite sure whether Stephen Dank is a sports scientist, to be honest,” Demetriou said.
In March, ASADA issued Dank with a show-cause letter, apparently related to when he worked at Essendon.
Two years ago, Demetriou said the league was becoming concerned about the influence that “phys-edders’ were having at some clubs.
“Of course there’s a place for sports science,” Demetriou said at Tuesday night’s forum.
“It’s when ‘sports scientists’ … we don’t even know if some were sports scientists – take it to another level, where they start to cut corners and start to believe in their own hype.
“We’ve seen that obviously infiltrate two sports – the NRL and AFL – with a couple of individuals who thought they were the greatest sports scientists on this planet.
“They did serious damage and impugned a lot of sports scientists.”
Demetriou said the situation became so troubling at a couple of clubs that doctors were reporting to sports scientists – not the other way around.
“It got out of hand,” he said.