The AFL will hold off on its ruling on Jobe Watson’s Brownlow Medal if the Essendon star joins an appeal mounted by teammates over their drug bans.

AFL spokesman Patrick Keane says the league has not been informed if Watson has joined teammates in an appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal over their one-year ban from the sport, imposed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, over the club’s 2012 supplements program.

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“We are waiting to hear. The appeal date is February 10,” he told the Herald Sun on Sunday.

“(A postponement) would seem likely but we have to wait until we hear definitively rather than people telling us what might happen,” he said.

The AFL Commission had indicated it would announce its decision by February 15 on Watson’s 2012 Brownlow Medal.

If Watson is stripped of the award, it is likely that Hawthorn’s Sam Mitchell and Richmond’s Trent Cotchin would be made retrospective winners of football’s greatest individual prize.