I still feel medal is mine

ESSENDON great Jobe Watson says he is the rightful owner of the 2012 Brownlow Medal amid fresh calls for footy’s highest individual honour to be returned to him.

Opening up on the toll of the devastating supplements saga, Watson said: “If I felt I had cheated, then I wouldn’t have accepted the medal in the first place.”

Asked whether he still felt he was the deserved winner of the 2012 medal that was later

Ex-Bomber Jobe Watson

awarded to runners-up Trent Cotchin of Richmond and Hawthorn’s Sam Mitchell, Watson replied: “I feel like I am. Whether or not someone else has it, or whether or not someone else views it that I wasn’t the deserved winner, then that is fine.

“But it doesn’t change how I felt or how I feel about it.”

It is 10 years this month since the ill-fated supplements program began that would trigger the greatest scandal in Australian sports history.

Watson’s father, club great Tim Watson, said the “injustice” of the decision to strip his son of the Brownlow because of a doping ban was “like the final crushing thing about that whole episode”.

He said he “worried” about how his 36-year-old son would cope with the aftershocks of the saga “for the rest of his life” considering Jobe became “the face” of the scandal.

“I found that (handing back the Brownlow) the most difficult thing, that you could have that taken away from you without there being any … I don’t believe real justification,” Watson said.

“It has been a tough journey for him and, as a parent, it has been difficult at times to observe it close hand. Injustice is a very difficult thing for people to get over.”

Asked how he reflected on the experience, Jobe was adamant he had “forgiven” and “moved on” but said his overall emotion was “sadness”.

“It has been really challenging,” Watson said. “I look back on it and wonder how I was able to get through it. It was such a drawn-out process and moved so much from one extreme to another and emotionally it was just exhausting.”

Former Essendon chairman Paul Little, who likened the drugs saga to a “war”, said he hoped the 2012 Brownlow would eventually be returned to its rightful owner.

In an eight-part documentary series to be aired on Fox Footy and Kayo from October 19, former Bombers president David Evans speaks for the first time about the drugs scandal and admits mistakes were made in dealing with the saga.

“Some things in hindsight you would have done differently, but there was no playbook for it,” Evans said.

“This was something that we were thrust into that there was no precedents.”

Coach James Hird said: “What happened to Jobe was horrific.”