Former Brisbane Lions player Rhys Mathieson has been banned from playing any level of football for three years after a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs.
Mathieson, who played 72 games for the Lions from 2016 to 2022, tested positive last year while playing in the QAFL for Wilston Grange, according to the Herald Sun.
The report also stated the banned substance Mathieson tested positive for anabolic steroid oxymetholone.
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It had previously been reported a former AFL player had tested positive for a drug banned both in and outside of competition in an “extremely rare” situation.
Positive tests for illicit substances are more common.
The former Lion did not play football at any level this year, and will be unable to take the field again until August 10, 2027.
He will be allowed to return to training in June of that year.
Mathieson, whose last game for Brisbane was in the 2022 preliminary final loss to Geelong, has been training as a bodybuilder since he last played football.
He has attracted a social media following in that time, and documented that he added more than 10kg of muscle last year.
Mathieson’s last year at Brisbane was in 2023 and as he tested positive to performance-enhancing substance within a year of retiring from the AFL, he came under the AFL’s anti-doping code.
He avoided a maximum four-year ban with his suspension reduced to three years as Mathieson admitted to intentionally using the substance for non-football reasons.
Mathieson spoke on his podcast, ‘Rip Through It’, last year about drug-testers coming to his parents house at 5am one day.
“So 5am in the morning, buzzer is going off at the front door. I don’t live at this residence no more, my mum and dad do,” Mathieson said.
“My poor mum is going, ‘What the hell. Why is there two guys buzzing our door at 5am?’ She’s getting a bit worried, a bit scared.
“(She) sends the old boy there, he’s in his jocks, has to throw on the dressing gown.
“He opens the door and he goes, ‘What do you blokes want?’ … at this hour it’s dark, he can barely see.
“And they’re like, ‘Anti-doping’. He just goes like, ‘Nah, not interested. And shuts it (the door). So he was thinking it was like an electricity company trying to sell him something.
“So then he goes and has his coffee and 30 minutes later they’re still there. He said, ‘Seriously, what do you guys want?’
“And that’s when they said this is anti-doping, we’re here to test Rhys Mathieson.”
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