Veteran coach Mick Malthouse warns the AFL will remember the Essendon supplements saga the way US baseball remembers the Black Sox scandal.

The Carlton coach said he was quizzed about the issue while he visited football organisations in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The saga is set to drag into a third year, with the AFL anti-doping tribunal about to start hearing charges against 34 current and past Essendon players.

“Most people are absolutely sick to death of it,” Malthouse told SEN.

“I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault it’s taken too long – it’s just the procedure.”

The three-time premiership coach then brought up the notorious Black Sox scandal, where eight Chicago White Sox players were banned for life from American Major League baseball.

The players were accused of intentionally losing games during the 1919 World Series.

It remains one of the biggest controversies in American sporting history.

“The baseball side from America … the White Sox? … so I remembered that,” he said.

“I remember the name, I can’t actually remember what took place.

“You know what, this saga I think will be remembered that far in the future in Australian sport.”

“One, it’s just been terrible and two, it’s been a drag on our great game for so long.”

Malthouse has returned from a trip to the UK and Ireland, where he visited soccer and rugby organisations.

“The only thing they hit me with when I first walked in there was `what in the hell are you blokes doing with that team?’,” he said

“They couldn’t remember the team – it was incidental who it was – it was just `you preach and you preach and there’s nothing that’s happened’.

“And this is their quote – `we are victims of it, because all our policies have had to change because of it.

“‘We are talking man hours to get things up and running to guarantee what goes through the place’.

“That’s probably just good procedure, but this is not just an Australian issue – we are condemned overseas.”