Lovett-Murray’s Melbourne agent, Peter Jess, said the retired Bombers star was considering joining in a possible group legal action with five or six other Essendon players who were exploring their legal options over the club’s supplements program.

“We are expecting to brief legal advisers,” Mr Jess said.

Mr Jess called on the AFL Commission to stand aside while legal action was under way.

He said the Essendon injection regime had been allowed to occur because of “a complete and systematic failure” by the AFL.

The AFL was the primary employer and had overarching responsibility to ensure the players had appropriately monitored occupational health and safety (OHS) systems, he said.

“It’s written into the collective bargaining agreement so there are minimum standards of OHS,” Mr Jess said.

“There’s been a clear failure of that,” he said.

Mr Jess said he was waiting to see the progress of a statement of claim lodged in the Supreme Court last Friday by another former Essendon player, Hal Hunter, before forming his advice to Lovett-Murray.

Hunter’s lawyers are seeking documents about Essendon’s supplements program, claiming the program exposed players, including Hunter, to significant risks to their health, safety and general wellbeing, as well as the risk of using prohibited substances.

Mr Jess said he would meet with Hunter’s advisers next week.

Some of the Essendon players who had approached him about exploring their legal options were among the 34 who were this week found not guilty of taking banned drugs by an AFL anti-doping tribunal. Some were not because they had not signed consent forms to take the supplements, he said.

However, they had still been injected with the supplements despite not signing a consent, Mr Jess said.

He said he was trying to determine what possible damages might be awarded to Lovett-Murray if the duty of care he was entitled to was found to have been breached.

“At the moment all the Essendon players are being monitored over the next five years to see if there is any impact from the supplements program,” Mr Jess said.

He said it was “mind-boggling” to hear there might be no records of Essendon’s supplements program when it had been “a major intrusion into players’ lives”.

While Lovett-Murray still faces much uncertainty about his future, this week’s not guilty finding by the AFL clears him to continue as assistant coach with the Heywood football club.

Mr Jess said a guilty verdict would have meant Lovett-Murray would have been banned from all AFL games.

Lovett-Murray played junior football at Heywood and the North Ballarat Rebels before being drafted into the AFL.

A running half-back with Essendon, he started playing with the club in 2004 and retired in 2013 after 145 games.

He has said he received supplements and injections from late 2011 through the 2012 AFL season.