Ex-West Coast Eagle Eric Mackenzie wants Willie Rioli to help Sport Integrity Australia improve education

Willie Rioli could become an important figure in Sport Integrity Australia’s quest to improve athlete education following former West Coast defender Eric Mackenzie’s appointment to SIA’s Athlete Advisory Group. Mackenzie is one of 12 current and former athletes from the AFL, NRL, Super Netball, WNBL, Olympic and Paralympic sports who have been appointed by SIA CEO David Sharpe to provide a greater insight into their codes. That group’s recent meeting focused on improving athlete education and targeted using the experiences of players who have committed breaches to prevent others from suffering the same fate. Swimmer Shayna Jack, who tested positive to ligandrol in 2019, has already provided her insights for the program. Mackenzie’s final two seasons as an AFL player were spent playing alongside Rioli and that relationship could now become important for athlete education. “I’d happily reach out to Willie and try and find out how we can help this from happening again,” Mackenzie told The West Australian. “That’s what Sport Integrity Australia are doing – using people who have been through it. There’s Shayna Jack. She’s done a big piece on her learnings for how we can stop these things happening in the future. “It is about going to the athletes who have had integrity issues and figuring out what the learnings are from them to how we can stop it.” Rioli will return for the Eagles against Gold Coast on Sunday following a two-year ban for twice substituting his urine sample in 2019. He has never publicly explained why he committed that offence. But West Coast raised concerns at the time about the changes to doping education, saying it didn’t appropriately cover the learning needs of all athletes. Mackenzie said providing more diverse educational programs would cater for the different ways people learn. Sport Integrity Australia was heavily criticised for taking 18 months to hear Rioli’s case despite him being provisionally suspended. That followed numerous other athletes having to wait extended periods to have their cases heard. Mackenzie said joining the advisory board had shown him the difficulties with organising swift hearings. “You see it in all sports. It’s not just footy,” he said. “There’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff which I don’t think anyone knew about that they had to do and deal with. There was actually a big backlog of cases as well. To be able to hold a fair trial for everyone, they want to get all the information as well. They’d rather take time and get it right.” Mackenzie was added to the advisory panel after spending 16 months studying and working in Switzerland following his AFL retirement. The former key defender is also an International Testing Agency athlete ambassador.