The relentless and ultimately successful pursuit of Essendon by anti-doping agencies for a guilty verdict and a meaningful suspension was driven by their conviction that if an AFL Tribunal had heard the case against Lance Armstrong, the American cyclist would still have seven Tour de France titles.
The World Anti-Doping Agency and its national affiliates, such as the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, did not want the first case of athletes from a professional male team sport taking banned drugs to receive the benefit of the doubt by a domestic sports tribunal.
"Harmonisation" is the key word in international sport and anti-doping circles penalties against individual athletes and team sports for use of performance enhancing substances must be the same.
The appeal by WADA against an AFL anti-doping tribunal which found in favour of 34 past and present Essendon players of doping violations has been upheld by CAS and the AFL finding set aside.
All 34 who were injected with the banned drug thymosin beta-4 have been given a two-year suspension effective from the date the AFL Tribunal freed them on March 31, 2015.
It expires on March 31, 2017 but the four and a half months the still active players served from an AFL provisional suspension means they will be eligible to return to training in November 2016.
Essendon have lost a great chunk of their squad for the entire 2016 season.
The players did not receive any further backdated relief, as the NRL's Cronulla players did, because they were not viewed as having cooperated with the enquiry.
The CAS panel, which met in Sydney in November, asked seven of the players to come forward for questioning. They were not served up by their club, or the AFL Players Association for examination, or, indeed, asked by the AFL's anti-doping tribunal to appear.
The CAS panel said the finding of a violation of 11.2 of the AFL anti-doping code had been reached by a majority, inferring that one of the three tribunes disagreed.
However, Fairfax Media understands this is simply because not all 34 players were interviewed by the CAS panel and therefore one of its members could not find against all 34.
CAS may have also viewed the AFL negotiations with the federal government as subversion of the anti-doping process, as well as the legal action by then Essendon coach James Hird against a joint AFL/ASADA investigation as non-cooperation.
Essentially, the evidence viewed by both CAS and the AFL tribunal was the same but CAS' approach differed.
The AFL Tribunal set themselves three questions: was the supplement imported from China thymosin beta-4; was the supplement compounded for Essendon's use thymosin beta-4 and finally, was the substance injected at Essendon thymosin beta-4?
The AFL Tribunal could not be comfortably satisfied on the first two questions, which meant it never reached the stage of questioning the Essendon players over what substances they were injected with on Monday and Tuesday mornings.
Rather than take a linear attack, common in criminal cases, CAS sought to piece together a jigsaw.
Thymosin beta-4 is a peptide designed to improve recovery and early in the week is the best time for its administration. Six of the players who appeared before CAS said they were given thymosin and a seventh said he saw the name on a vial.
The relentless pursuit of Essendon was led by a zealous former policeman, ASADA's chief executive, Ben McDevitt, who was convinced the well-meaning AFL tribunes had looked at the Essendon case through the lens of "beyond reasonable doubt", rather than the lower bar of "comfortable satisfaction".
Olympic team sports, such as soccer, basketball and hockey, already compete at the summer Olympics and are subject to doping rules. WADA is negotiating with the big American professional team sports, such as the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBL and ice hockey and some are already WADA compliant.
The AFL, which prides itself on its indigenous game, must now join the wide world of a sport.
