Brendan Lee (born 9 September 1987) is a former professional

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

player at the

Essendon Football Club The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers, is a professional Australian rules football club. The club plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the game's premier competition. The club was formed by the McCracken family in their A ...

in the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...

(AFL), and most notable for his long career with

East Perth East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sunrise, Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from ...

in the

West Australian Football League The West Australian Football League (WAFL) is an Australian rules football league based in Perth, Western Australia. The league currently consists of ten teams, which play each other in a 20-round season usually lasting from March to September, ...

(WAFL). Originally from East Perth, Lee made his senior WAFL debut in 2007 at age 19. By 2010, he was a regular senior player for the Royals, and he won the club's best and fairest award in 2011. After sixty games for the club and at age 24, he was recruited to the

by with a late selection in the 2012 Rookie Draft (No. 78 overall). He played two senior games for Essendon during 2012, debuting in Round 20 against at

Docklands Stadium Docklands Stadium, also currently known by naming rights sponsorship as Marvel Stadium, is a multi-purpose sports and entertainment stadium in the Docklands area of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Construction started in October 1997 and was ...

, and played in the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...

for Essendon's

Bendigo Bendigo ( ) is a city in Victoria, Australia, located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital. As of 2019, Bendigo had an urban population of 100,991, makin ...

during the season. He was delisted at the end of the season, and returned to East Perth, where he won another club best and fairest in 2013 and became club captain. Lee, along with 33 other Essendon players, was found guilty of using a banned performance-enhancing substance,

thymosin beta-4 Thymosin beta-4 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''TMSB4X'' gene. Recommended INN (International Nonproprietary Name) for thymosin beta-4 is 'timbetasin', as published by the World Health Organization (WHO). The protein consists (in ...

, as part of Essendon's sports supplements program during the 2012 season. He and his team-mates were initially found not guilty in March 2015 by the AFL Anti-Doping Tribunal, but a guilty verdict was returned in January 2016 after an appeal by the

World Anti-Doping Agency The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA; french: Agence mondiale antidopage, AMA) is a foundation initiated by the International Olympic Committee based in Canada to promote, coordinate, and monitor the fight against drugs in sports. The agency's key ...

. He was suspended for two years which, with backdating, ended in November 2016; as a result, he served approximately fourteen months of his suspension and missed the entire 2016 WAFL season. He retired from WAFL football after his suspension, finishing with 124 games for the Royals in his career.

References

External links

Brendan Lee Player Profile, Essendon Football Club
1987 births Living people Essendon Football Club players Australian rules footballers from Western Australia East Perth Football Club players Australian sportspeople in doping cases Bendigo Football Club players {{AFL-bio-1980s-stub