Former ASADA boss Richard Ings expects the anti-doping authority to press ahead with its investigation into NRL club Cronulla after taking the decision to scrap interviews with players.
Ings, a former ATP tennis umpire and head of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority from 2006 until 2010, said investigators are likely to have seen the interviews as a waste of time following Wade Graham's controversial meeting with investigators two weeks ago.
That meeting ended abruptly and abandoned two weeks ago after lawyers form both parties failed to agree on a line of questioning.
Explosive excerpts of an independent investigation by former ASADA deputy chair Tricia Kavanagh released in March were published by News Limited on Sunday.
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The report claimed the Sharks employed a systematic regimen of peptides in 2011 in a program of injections, tablets and creams over an 11-week period while controversial sports scientist Stephen Dank was linked to the Sharks.
NRL chief executive Dave Smith moved quickly to defend his organisation after it emerged it had been in possession of Kavanagh's report but had not made any moves to issue infraction notices against any Cronulla players.
The NRL was slammed by World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) boss John Fahey earlier this week for not being helpful enough in the investigation compared to the AFL and Essendon, who like Cronulla have been embroiled in the crisis over its supplements program under Dank.
Ings said it would not have been possible for Smith to have made a decision without ASADA acting first.
"The findings in the report would have to be proven first even though it appears to be quite damning," Ings told AAP.
"What ASADA and the NRL would have to prove at a tribunal is that what is written in the report can be corroborated.
"So ASADA will have to prove the substances were banned and there is some contention about that.
"Next they have to show what people took and that not just on a piece of a paper, but corroborating evidence that someone injected it.
"They have to show that whatever was in the syringe was a banned substance."
Before any infraction notice can be imposed on a player by the NRL, ASADA has to present a water-tight case to the Anti-Doping Rule Violation Panel (ADRVP).
The ADRVP is a statutory function of the federal government made up of lawyers, doctors and lab specialists.
"The delay will be ASADA preparing it's case to the ADRVP," Ings said.
"The ADRVP want to know for sure all the facts to make an informed decision because any verdict they make can be appealed to a range of government bodies.
"This is through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) which is a statutory body. When any government body in Australia makes a decision that is not accepted it can be appealed here."
It's expected Cronulla's legal team would appeal any guilty decision and Ings expects the case will continue to drag on for many more months.
"This is one of the most complicated cases I've ever seen, it involves the two biggest codes in the country," he said.
