WHATEVER you think of the AFL's illicit drugs policy to allow a player three strikes before his name is released to his club and the media, the fact is that under the current system the chance of anyone failing three tests is so unlikely.

Probably only a handful of players have even been tested three times since the out-of-competition drugs policy was employed.

The AFL has conducted about 500 tests in each of the past two years, and with 640 players in the competition, you don't need to be a genius to work out that most players won't have been tested more than once; many not at all.

The AFL says it target tests. The poor old Brownlow medallist is in their sights — maybe at next year's awards night Andrew Demetriou will have the medal in one hand and a specimen cup in the other.

First-year players and the long-term injured are also on the hit list. But with so few tests conducted, and having an idea who is in the firing line in any case, a player would have to be extremely stupid and even more unlucky to get caught three times.

The drugs don't stay in the system long, and if you were that serious about your drugs, presumably there are masking agents that help the cause as well.

The AFL is aware that the current drugs issue is a major problem, not least, as far as it is concerned, because the image of the game has suffered an enormous amount of damage since Andrew Rule exposed the situation in The Sunday Age a few weeks ago.

Presumably the AFL wants to stamp out the problem, but the current policy is inadequate for that aim — even if it does increase the number of tests, as Adrian Anderson promised last month.

The softly, softly approach, notifying the handful of players it has caught, perhaps giving them a bit of counselling and keeping the whole thing a secret unless it gets to the wildly unlikely scenario of a player being caught three times, is hardly a deterrent at all.

The media frenzy over the past few weeks will make many players think twice about taking drugs, but if the AFL wants to maintain the momentum, it needs to get tougher. It should vastly increase the number of tests and tell the club if one of its player has tested positive — if not after the first test, then certainly the second.

Charles Johnson is a 38-year-old financial adviser who supports Hawthorn

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