Letter From Australia:The memory of Michelle Smith has been evoked in Australia this past week. The issue that has drawn out her name is drugs, to which Smith is forever linked. The sport at issue is Australian football, to which Smith would have no previous link at all.

At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Smith won three gold medals. Her achievement drew wonder because she came from a country that lacked a 50-metre pool.

Then she drew scepticism as the champion American swimmer Janet Evans questioned how the Irishwoman could improve so rapidly at the age of 26. Smith's improvement had come under the coaching of her husband, Erik De Bruin, who had been banned from field events for a drugs breach. The US media joined Evans in casting doubt on one of the biggest stories of the Games.

Three years later, Smith was banned for having tampered with a urine test in 1997. But did the ban justify the actions of Evans and company, who sullied Smith's name without proof she had taken drugs?

Recently in Melbourne, the Australian Football League player Jason Akermanis wrote in his newspaper column of a match in which a regular opponent from the Perth club West Coast had startled him with newfound recovery ability.

Akermanis, now with the Western Bulldogs but in those days with the Brisbane Lions, had played on the opponent, unnamed, on several occasions and had full faith in his own aerobic edge. But after three passages of play in which the pair had sprinted after the ball and his man had defeated Akermanis, the Lions showman was astounded by his opponent's improvement.

His claim in his column that the player must have discovered drugs was considered controversial, but no more controversial than many other of his utterances over the years. No one doubts his claim would have been made in the spirit of improving football by smoking out the drug cheats.

This week, however, a television reporter declared the unnamed player was Michael Braun, a West Coast midfielder who for his consistency over time has been admired above several of his Rolls-Royce team-mates.

Braun was outraged and threatened legal action against the television station.

Several players have backed Braun by claiming it was unfair to damage a reputation when there was no proof to support the allegation.

I, for one, am glad Akermanis did what he did. In this age of concern over drugs in sport, all competitors of power sports like Australian football should be made aware this is the environment in which they compete. There is an occasional war of words and they might be caught in the crossfire. Such is the price they agree to pay.

On another issue in Australian football - the issue of coaches seeing out their contracts despite being told they are not be offered another contract after season's end - two AFL coaching legends have taken divergent paths after ignominious sackings in recent weeks.

Essendon informed Kevin Sheedy, their coach for 27 years, they would not renew his contract after this season. Carlton summarily sacked Denis Pagan, their coach of for five seasons, who had earlier enjoyed significant success as coach of North Melbourne for a decade.

Pagan's message to his players during his 16 years as a senior coach was all about sacrificing yourself for the team. Hard, no-frills players were his favourites.

Yet for all the talk of putting the team first, Pagan proved as egocentric as the next coach after the events of late 2006, when the players and board decided they would be better off without him. With a view to sacking Pagan and appointing another coach in his place, the Carlton board asked Barry Mitchell, one of Carlton's assistant coaches, to make a presentation outlining his coaching credentials.

Mitchell gave his presentation but the board reneged on its decision to sack Pagan. The coach then refused to work with Mitchell, who, like him, had more than a year of his contract to run. Mitchell was forced to work out of a small hut on the opposite side of the ground to Pagan's office. Pagan refused to speak to Mitchell, even though Mitchell's counsel should been sought on younger players.

If Pagan had practised as he preached by putting the team first, he would have swallowed his pride and worked with Mitchell, who, after all, had only given a presentation on his coaching ambitions when asked to do so.

In the end, Pagan's sacking was made inevitable by his team's tendency to repeatedly lose by more than 100 points, equivalent to a 5-0 thrashing in soccer. Clearly, the players were no longer heeding the coach's message (if they ever did).

Pagan was determined to serve out the final year of his lucrative contract, but he wanted to do it for himself. The board did the right thing in sacking him. It's a view that's been supported by recent events.

Last weekend, under the coaching of stand-in coach Brett Ratten, a recently retired legendary Carlton player, the Blues pushed one of the competition's glamour clubs, St Kilda, losing only narrowly.

In Adelaide on Saturday, the Blues came from a long way behind to haul in another strong club, Port Adelaide, only to be overrun again in the last quarter.

Ratten, 35, is young in coaching terms, but given his team's improvement over the past few weeks and, especially, his willingness to impose a more contemporary game plan, it would appear he is front runner to be named Carlton coach, a job that's among the most prestigious in Australian sport. Presumably, one of his messages will be about sacrificing yourself for the team.

While Carlton dispensed with Pagan's services immediately, the club's arch rivals Essendon asked their enigmatic coach, Sheedy, to see out his contract, which meant coaching until the end of the season, which is due to finish in September.

Sheedy, one of Australian sport's great salesmen, has turned the final weeks of his Essendon tenure into an advertisement for his services. He believes if he can coach Essendon into the top eight, enabling them to play in the finals, he will have pulled off a coaching masterstroke.

Sheedy's attitude is the main reason why the club has been treading water for a few years. Rather than play the young players and run his eye over their progress, Sheedy plays the canny veterans and hopes that making the finals will save his bacon for another year.

The Essendon board, to its credit, has put the club's interests ahead of those of Sheedy, who's expressed a desire to become the longest-serving coach in Australian football history. You'd have to be on drugs to put any faith on a coach who's more interested in his legacy than the club's performance.