IN years to come we might be hailing the former Executive Director of the Jamaican Anti-Doping Commission (JADCo) Anne Shirley for her brave stance in going public with information that the agency she headed for less than a year had not been doing what it was mandated to do.

Brave, because no one associated with the Jamaican track and field product wanted information like that to be spread all over the international media.

Hopefully after the anger and denials and the calling for her to be hung from the nearest tree as a traitor, or to be deported, have died down, real work is getting JADCo to do what it was meant to do will start, once and for all.

A good start might be to clean house from the very top and appoint a brand new board, sending home those who obviously have stayed too long.

We may question Shirley’s timing of the disclosure which came a mere two days after the end of yet

another successful IAAF World Championships where Jamaica won nine medals including six golds in Moscow, Russia, and effectively throwing a wet blanket over the celebrations.

We may question her motives- given her very public and seemingly not consensual parting from JADCo earlier this year, about a year after she was hired.

We may even ask what programmes did she put in place or even attempt to put in place to help with the education of the local- based athletes, especially those in the high school system, when she was in charge.

What no one has yet dared to question is the veracity of her claims or the frightening numbers she presented.

Maybe we would have preferred that she had released these numbers to the local media and not an American magazine, but if we are to believe her, she has tried on numerous occasions to get her message to those in charge from the very top, but everyone she said chose to ignore her; even while positive drug tests after drug tests piled up and the names of those being caught got more and more prominent.

Sure we were upset and embarrassed that our dirty underwear got exposed, but is there ever a good time for this kind of information to get out? When really would it be okay to say that we have not been diligent with the out of competition testing, or that we have not hired enough staff to get the work done?

Sure it is easy to point the finger elsewhere and blame everyone and try to shove the responsibility elsewhere; it is WADA’s job to test athletes and keep up with their whereabouts, if that’s the case then why even bother with a JADCO in the first place?

Was the setting up of JADCo just a sham to appease those on the outside who claimed Jamaican athletes were getting away with murder?

The same Sunday when news broke that Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson had failed drugs tests with three other athletes at our National Senior Championships, a writer with the same American magazine posted on the social media Twitter that the Jamaican authorities had not been doing much testing leading up to the London Olympic Games.

I challenged him to prove his allegations and he responded by saying when his sources decided to come out we would see.

Obviously, the information that Shirley presented in her article was not a secret, as even the Americans were privy to it then. The question is, was this information presented to our authorities, and did they even attempt to do anything about it?

Regardless if it is true or not, our increased success in the sprints since 2008 at the Beijing Olympics will attract global interest and not everyone will be cheering along with us.

There are those who will be sceptical of our success and will be trying to poke holes in it. Not all of the dozens of journalists who come here for ‘Champs’ or for our National Senior Trials are here to marvel at how well our athletes do.

A colleague journalist who knew of the planned visit to Jamaica some years ago by the same American magazine writer who posted on Twitter, warned me not to even engage him in any conversations in anything other than track and field performances, as his intent then was not to show us at our best.

With people like him and many others just waiting for the opportunity to take us down, even while American baseball is in the midst of one of their regular drug crises and top American athletes like Tyson Gay failing drug tests, we must ensure our house is in order.

We need to thank Anne Shirley as hopefully her revelations will spur those in charge to make sure we do what is required to ensure compliance.

Cleaning house might be the first step to ensuring JADCo falls in line and instead of the grandstanding and empty threats, the real work might start.