Former Essendon skipper and I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here cast member Dyson Turner-Heppell has maintained the club's innocence during the supplements saga a decade ago, despite "names have never been cleared".
Heppell entered the Jungle in Series 12 of the reality show, and opened up on the lasting toll of the scandal.
The Bomber was in his second season, and the investigation stretched over four years, culminating in the wiping out of 34 players for the 2016 season.
The Tullamarine club were also stripped of its finals position in 2013, banned James Hird for 12 months, was fined $2 million, dispossessed of its draft picks, and Jobe Watson's 2012 Brownlow Medal was taken and passed onto runners-up duo Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin.
"At the footy club we went through an entire supplements saga, drugs scandal, that kicked off early in my career around performance-enhancing drugs, which was full on," Turner-Heppell said on Tuesday night during the show.
"In 2012, we started like a supplements regime at the club where you'd go home with your vitamins, minerals, all your tablets. And within that, we were also getting injections.
"The world doping agency got involved, and we were rigorously tested, we were under constant scrutiny, and in the end, not one positive drug test came back."
Upon his return to the AFL, Turner-Heppell took over as Essendon captain in 2017, helping navigate the club through the tumultuous period following the investigation.
The much-loved Bomber led the club until 2022 before handing over the reins to Zach Merrett, and retired at the end of 2024 after 253 games.
But the scandal marred his time in the top-flight, and put his love of the game in question, which was a battle to rekindle.
"Absolutely not (did we do wrong)," he said.
"They gave us the rundown on everything we were taking, and me, just being curious about it and being young, not at any point was there a hint of being something suss or wrong.
"Full trust in that. Absolutely, but names have never been cleared. It's impacted the club for a long long time. I took over the captaincy of the club when I got back, 2017, that year though was just trying to get in a space again of loving footy because footy had had a cloud over it for so long again, it was like, ‘let's just the get the love and fun and joy back into it all.
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"Coming out the back end, it gave me a hell of a lot of resilience, ended up just being in a space of real gratitude knowing how quickly it can be stripped away."
Heppell follows a long line of AFL players who have joined the reality TV show since its inception in 2015.
He has also joined Collingwood as a development coach ahead of 2026.
