A DECISION on whether Jobe Watson will keep his 2012 Brownlow Medal will not be reached for another month, with the AFL Commission to determine the matter on November 15.
The League announced on Wednesday that, in light of the past and present Essendon players' failed appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal, it would convene to make a call on Watson's medal.
The Bombers captain polled 30 votes to win the medal in 2012, the season in which the club was undertaking its controversial supplements program.
How the Essendon anti-doping saga played out
Watson was one of the 34 players to be hit with 12-month bans by the Court of Arbitration for Sport earlier this year, with the group challenging the result in the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland.
The League had decided it would not make a call on Watson's Brownlow win until a result in the appeal was confirmed.
"The AFL accepts and acknowledges this Tribunal ruling and the AFL Commission repeats the statement it made when the CAS finding was handed down in January earlier this year – the AFL is fully committed to clean sport, for the sake of all players from all clubs in our competition," the AFL's statement said.
"The next Commission meeting in November will provide the appropriate amount of time for all relevant parties to prepare."
The players had appealed the Court of Arbitration for Sport's verdict on the basis that CAS did not have the power to conduct a de novo hearing - basically, a fresh case.
But in the appeal verdict handed down on Tuesday, the Swiss court ruled that the players had lost their right to challenge the CAS jurisdiction when they accepted the CAS rules for WADA's appeal of the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal's 'not guilty' verdict.
Football's governing body will need to weigh up whether it strips Watson of the Brownlow, and if it does, what it will choose to do with the medal.
It could choose to award the medal to equal runners up Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin, or decide that the 2012 count had no winner.
It also emerged on Wednesday that the AFL had invited Mitchell and Cotchin to make submissions about the issue.
But the two players declined the offer.
"He was given the opportunity, if he wanted to, but no, he has no interest in presenting," Mitchell's manager Peter Lenton told NAB AFL Trade Radio.
Lenton admitted to unease about Mitchell potentially being awarded his first Brownlow, given the circumstances.
"It would be a really strange way to get it and an uncomfortable way to receive it," Lenton said.
"But if that's the way it's determined, I suppose you have to go by the umpire's decision."
