Adelaide Crows–Kurt Tippett contract scandal During the trade period leading up to the 2013 season,
Adelaide Crows forward
Kurt Tippett sought to be traded. During trade negotiations, information was uncovered which brought into question the legality under AFL rules of Tippett's 2009 contract extension with Adelaide. The AFL investigated Tippett's contract during October and November, and charged Tippett and Adelaide with a total of eleven charges relating to draft tampering and breaching the total player payments, including: The final hearing took place on 30 November, and Adelaide and Tippett pleaded guilty to all charges. Adelaide was stripped of its first and second round draft picks, and banned from taking any father-son selections, in the 2013 National Draft, and received a $300,000 fine. Tippett was suspended for the 2013 NAB Cup and 11 premiership matches, with a further suspended sentence of 11 matches, and received a $50,000 fine. Several senior Adelaide personnel were also punished by the league: chief executive Steven Trigg and former football manager John Reid were each fined $50,000 and banned from AFL functions for six months (with a further suspended sentence of six months), and current football manager Phil Harper was banned from AFL functions for two months with a four-month suspended sentence. In a separate hearing in January 2013, the AFL Players' Association revoked the accreditation of Tippett's manager, Peter Blucher, for at least one year.
Melbourne Football Club tanking scandal Throughout the 2012/13 offseason, the league investigated the
Melbourne Football Club over allegations that it had
tanked during the latter part of the
2009 season – that is, that it had intentionally lost matches near the end of the season so that it would finish with no more than four wins, and therefore receive a
priority draft pick. The league released its findings in February 2013, and found the club not guilty of tanking. However, it did find two of Melbourne's then-senior staff members – senior coach
Dean Bailey and general manager of football operations
Chris Connolly – guilty of "acting in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the competition". This related most specifically to a meeting in July 2009, which became known colloquially as "the vault", in which Connolly allegedly openly discussed the potential benefits to the club of tanking. The guilty parties received the following penalties: • Connolly, who was still at the club in 2013 but serving in a role outside the football department, was suspended outright from serving in any position at any club until 1 February 2014. Connolly was sacked by Melbourne in October 2013. • Bailey, serving in 2013 as an assistant coach at the Adelaide Crows, was suspended from his position for the first sixteen weeks of the 2013 season, preventing him from having any contact with the Crows' playing group during that time. • The Melbourne Football Club, which was complicit to the infraction in its capacity as Connolly's and Bailey's employer, was fined $500,000. None of Melbourne, Connolly or Bailey contested these penalties.
Essendon Football Club supplements controversy On 5 February the
Essendon Football Club asked the
Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) to investigate the concerns over the clubs possible use of un-approved supplements during the
2012 season. An internal independent review conducted by
Dr. Ziggy Switkowski regarding the
Essendon Football Club governance processes was released to the public on 6 May. While ASADA investigated the legality of the supplements, the AFL separately investigated the administration of the club's supplements program, and charged the club and senior staff with bringing the game into disrepute. The charges focussed on the poor business practices within the program, including allowing "a culture of frequent, uninformed and unregulated use of the injection of supplements" at the club, incomplete record keeping which had made it impossible to determine with certainty whether or not players had been administered banned supplements, and for failing to guarantee the health and safety of its players in its program. On 27 August, five days before round 23 and after two days of discussions between the club and the league, the following penalties were imposed relating to these charges: • Essendon was fined $2 million (staggered over three years); this was the largest fine imposed on a club in the history of Australian sport. • Essendon was ruled ineligible to participate in the 2013 AFL finals series, achieved by relegating it to ninth position on the ladder. • Essendon was stripped of draft picks in the following two drafts: in 2013, its first and second round draft picks were stripped; in 2014, it was stripped of the first and second round draft picks it would have received based on its finishing position, but was granted the last draft pick in the first round. • Senior coach
James Hird was suspended from any involvement in any football club for twelve months, effective immediately. • Football operations manager Danny Corcoran was suspended from involvement in any football club for four months, with a further two-month suspended sentence, effective 1 October 2013. • Senior assistant coach
Mark Thompson was fined $30,000. • Club doctor Bruce Reid had contested his charge at a hearing from the AFL Commission, which was on Thursday 29 August, 10:30pm EST. The scandal was investigated over the following years, and ended with 34 players who were on the 2012 Essendon list being suspended for the entire
2016 AFL season as part of a partially offset two-year suspensions for using thymosin beta-4 during the scandal.
Adam Goodes–Eddie McGuire racism controversy Late in the final quarter of the
round 9 match between and ,
Adam Goodes became the target of racial abuse in which a 13-year-old Collingwood supporter called him an "ape". Goodes pointed the supporter out to security following the incident, who subsequently evicted her from the ground; after the match, Collingwood president
Eddie McGuire visited the Swans' rooms to apologise "on behalf of football", and stamped out that racism would not be tolerated by the Collingwood Football Club. Five days later, McGuire was involved in another controversy involving Goodes on his
Triple M Melbourne breakfast show, when he joked that Goodes could be used to promote the
King Kong musical that was to be held in Melbourne, quickly apologising on air after making the reference. McGuire initially defended his comments by saying that the remark was simply "a slip of the tongue", but admitted to vilifying Goodes in an interview later in the day, albeit unintentionally. ==References==