Aaron Lloyd: 'Sports Integrity Lawyer' on the possible sanctions awaiting Football Canada

Sport Lawyer Aaron Lloyd joined D'Arcy Waldegrave to discuss the new developments in the 'drone gate' scandal at the Paris Olympics. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sports Talk podcast with Dancy Wildergrave
from News Talk Z'B.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
We are talking now the vagaries of the law around
the Olympic Games and the huge controversy it's exploded over
the drone use by the Canadian women's football team. Sports
integrity lawyer from Minta Allison Rudd Watts, Aaron Lloyd joins us. Now, Aaron,
welcome to the show. This is well, I'd say it's
a minefield, isn't it. There are so many threats to

(00:34):
this story.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yeah, and there are a few sort of integrity stories
leading into the games, aren't they? And this one's arguably
the biggest one for us here in New Zealand, given
it's affecting us and relating to spying on us.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
So we start from the start. We'll start unpacking this
first up, we thought it was a one off incident
over night, it's developed. No, there are recidivists. Maybe twice
is not recidivist actions enough there and the action has
been taken. A couple of the coaches have been sent through,
sent home, one of them has stepped down initially. Is
that enough for you? Do you think to issue some

(01:07):
form of sanction? Or punishment.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
That's interesting, right, because you got to ask, well, what
would we want out of it? Well, certainly we would
want a personal accountability for those who are involved who
shouldn't have been doing these things. And it looks like
the Canadians have stepped up pretty quickly and pretty sensibly
to start dealing with that. But no, Look, I would
have thought the New Zealand Olympic Committee's made it pretty
clear as well as New Zealand Football that they're pretty

(01:29):
unhappy with this. And I would have thought this is
something that the International Olympic Committee is going to need
to respond to.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Not only the IOC but FIFA because this is their brand,
isn't it. So I'd expect that'd be complicit in any
form of sanction.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Look, I think that must be right. I mean, the
first thing you've got to ask is, you know, what
are the rules of the competition in which this occurs
in So you know, the Olympic Games is a pretty
detailed set of rules regarding a range of aspects and
it links to the Olympic Charter. This kind of thing
just isn't okay when you think about what the Olympic
Charter talks about fenness, principles of fairness, principles of integrity.

(02:02):
So the IOC, and it's the IOC's competition the elect
the Olympic Games is the sort of headline competition for them.
So the IOC really needs to step in here and
manage this. I think if they're going to retain credibility
over this competition being run with integrity, and then FIFA, well,
FIFA can probably look to see what the IOC does first,
given it in their backyard. But I would have thought

(02:22):
FIFA needs to step in as well, and if anything
further needs to happen, then FIFA will need to step
in and deal with it as well.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
On a scale of one to teen, though, this is
extraordinarily serious for the Olympics, for FIFA and for Canada.
This is not something you can brush under the carpet
and go, oh, well, never mind, let's move on.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Look. I think that's right. I think gone of the
days where we in sport look around and go, well, look,
any means necessary to obtain the advantage is okay, you know,
And look, this isn't the first sport to have a
spying scandal. We've had it in rugby union. Bill Belichick
and the co had it. In the NFL, people are
constantly at eliite level going to be trying to get
an edge. You're going to be trying to get intelligence

(03:00):
on the team, you're doing video analysis on them. It's
a slope towards putting a drone up and flying over
their practice. But clearly that's crossing the line. And I
think unless we want to free for all, this is
an opportunity, particularly in the context of the Olympics, for
the IOC and perhaps Fiver as well, to put a
bit of a line in the end and go, look,

(03:20):
that's clearly over the line, and here's what's going to
happen to it, so that we can disincentivize others from
doing it.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
I'd like to talk about more about the drone and
the prohibited zone that it was flying, and that's another
three another kettle of fish. But before that, around the
integrity and the expected behavior of these Olympics sides. Is
this made clear before each nation climbs into the Olympics
is a set out in black and white and stone
thout shalt not.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Well, probably not to the level of thou shalt not
fly a drone over a competing team's practice. But certainly
you would think that anyone familiar with clean sport and
in sports integrity principles, and those principles are certainly set
out in the Olympic Charter, you would look at this
and you would go that crosses a line and it
goes too far. As I understand it from reporting, there's

(04:07):
certainly a certain amount of sort of deception around it.
As you've already identified information around how prevalent this was
has come out and drips and drabs that suggests that
no one was completely forthcoming to begin with around what
the practice was. If your practice is legitimate and you're
comfortable with it, you're going to come forward and talk
about your full practice to begin with, aren't you. So

(04:27):
the fact that you don't, in the fact that you
sort of drip feed some of the details or some
of the details come out later, suggesting in and of itself,
the people that were doing it knew that what they
were doing was wrong. But look, there isn't going to
be a black and white rule to cover every single scenario,
and integrity doesn't.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Work like that.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
We set a set of rules around the stuff that's
really clear. We set a set of principles that people
follow and people have to use and exercise their judgment.
And clearly, clearly no one who is flying a drone
over another team's practice think that that's okay. They do
think it's okay, then you're not setting your principal standards
right to begin with.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
We're joined by sports lawyer Aaron Lloyd from mentor Ellison
Rudd and whats how deep this investigation go? Considering the
subterfuge engaged by the Canadians, as you were just pointing out,
do you expect this to be more than considerable? They'll
did pretty deep, won't they?

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well you'd think they would. I mean, the key is
going to be is this organizational or is it the individuals?
You know, if it was Canadian football that condoned this,
how widespread is this practice? Is it widespread with other teams?
What about the Canadian men's team? What about does this
go on in the Canadian Premier League? What kind of
behavior is that? I would have thought Canadian Football will
want to have a pretty good look at it itself,

(05:38):
and in doing that they may be able to appease
the IOC and may be able to appease fefit to
a degree, because if Canadian football come out and say, look,
this is not okay, we're going to investigate ourselves, and
we're going to get to the bottom of it, and
we're going to set some pretty clear rules, and we're
going to discipline the people who are involved. Certainly, if
they're smart, that's how they'll approach it, and that's how

(05:59):
they want to embrace it. Where it will become a
problem for them if, as it turns out, this is
a well condoned if it was to be a well
condoned practice in the organized and if it's the organization
and not just rogue individuals within the organization, that's when
it really becomes a big problem. But you would look,
you wouldn't have expected, you wouldn't expect so buy and large.
With some exceptions, most international sports bodies and national sports

(06:20):
bodies get the rules, they want to play by them.
They do what they can to enforce their teams around it.
Where you're getting people pushing the boundaries will often be
individual athletes or individual coaches. So that's how it looks.
In this instance, it probably is how it is. But
I think what IOC and FIFA will want to do
is investigated enough to make clear whether that's the case.

(06:41):
And if it turns out this is rogue employees, as
the Canadians are saying it is, then you deal with
those employees, you reinforce the rules, and I guess you
move on. But that's a matter for the IOC and
FIFA to do because if they don't do that, well,
then people will doubt whether there's real integrity.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
An essence though aaron, whether it was rogue or not,
it still falls under the umbrella of the Canadian Olympic Committee.
So the buck has to stop with them, regardless of
where this came from.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Surely yes, but it depends on what you mean by
the buck has to stop. I mean, you know, what
do we mean by that? Do we mean the Canadian
teams team now gets disqualified from the Olympics? Well, probably not,
or maybe I don't know, But what do we mean
by that? Is it the whole of the Canadian team
or is it just the footballers? Is it just a
women's football team or is it just those individuals? So

(07:30):
you can see there's a sort of sliding scale. If
you're going to punish someone for wrongdoing, how high do
you take the punishment in terms of organizationally, is it
the whole of the Canadian team, is it just the football,
is it just the female football or is it just
the individuals who were involved. And let's imagine this. Let's
imagine that the Canadian football and Canadian Olympic team had

(07:50):
some play, some pretty good and robust integrity policies and
training and commitment and genuinely speaking, they had a culture
of integrity across that organization. And it turns out that
it is a couple of rogue people, then the appropriate
thing to do is to focus on those people. What
you've got to do, though, is you've got to work
out when that's really the case or whether a bad

(08:11):
organization is just putting two people up as scapegoats. And
that's the key in identifying which is it that we're
dealing with. So we're dealing with a situation where at
its core, the organization has integrity, but there's a couple
of bad actors, in which case deal with them, or
is that how it's being presented when in fact the
organization doesn't have a good culture of integrity, in which case,
then you've got to drill deeper, you know, And we've

(08:33):
seen that in other areas of sport. Doping is a
classic example. Generally speaking, it's individual actors who are misbehaving
in a dope in context, but occasionally you'll get a
countrywide organization the Russian doping scandal, It'suchi and so forth
that says otherwise. So that's the key really in a
sports integrity model. You've got to work out whether where
is the rot. Is the rot just the individuals, or

(08:54):
is the rot that the organizational.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Level and it's only then aaron that possible sanctions can
be applied. Is there much point in talking about what
may happen because I expect the scope. Again, so it's
a sliding rule, Isn't it depend on who did it,
how deep they believe it is, So investigate first and
then start meeting out punishment after that and what scale
could they go?

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Well, and one hundred percent that's right, And I think
you have to do it that way around because otherwise
what you're doing is you're making decisions based on imperfect
information and you're sort of reacting in a knee jerk
and sort of sort of lynch mob kind of fashion.
Look here, I think we've got to come back to
the question of this we had. It's easy for us

(09:36):
too to get passionate about it. As New Zealanders. We
feel like we've sort of our team's privacy and perhaps
even the privacy of the individuals has been violated. We
feel like we've been cheat cheated. But it is a
sliding scale, you know. There's a difference is that we
will already be subject to considerable analysis by opposition teams
that is entirely legitimate analysis. This is not legitimate analysis,

(10:00):
and there's a line there, And I think what you
need to do is you need to say, well, how
serious a deviation from the norm is that, who is
it and what is it? And then what are the
options available? And look, the International Olympic Committee, under its
Olympic Rules and the Olympic Charter, has quite a broad
range of powers and ability to sanction worn fine and
so forth. Disqualifications certainly could be on the cards here,

(10:24):
but it doesn't feel, at least to me, it doesn't
feel like that's the territory, and at the moment it
feels like the territory are in as First of all,
we need to identify how deep this is, how big
can issue this is, and then identify whether there's any
sanctions that need to go beyond the individuals, and my
suspicion here is that there won't be sanctions going beyond
the individuals, But we wait and see because only the
IOC will be in control of that.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
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