Whether this proves to be the end of the Essendon saga might not definitively be known for at least 42 more days. They might have hoped it would be a full stop on this matter but it has been less full stop than pregnant pause.
ASADA has 21 days in which to decide if it wishes to appeal the decision of the AFL's Anti-Doping Tribunal.
Given ASADA is digesting the 132-page judgment it is unlikely a decision on appeal will be known by Wednesday morning when chief executive Ben McDevitt holds a press conference.
It has been reported McDevitt will make known the decision on an appeal at the press conference but ASADA on Tuesday night indicated this was premature – it is more likely to be made later than sooner.
Once ASADA's right-to-appeal period has lapsed the overarching body WADA will have another three weeks that to decide whether it will take the matter to appeal itself. WADA has the right to take the matter straight to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport and not to the AFL's internal appeal board.
Hence there is another 42 days' wait to learn if there will be an appeal and if one is to be held it will be many months after that for any appeal to be held.
Previously choosing to appeal would not have been an easy matter but there was a recent change to the AFL Anti-Doping Code as a necessary consequence of legislative changes to the ASADA Act.
The AFL, as it was required to do as a signatory to WADA, adopted the changes to the AFL anti-doping code this month and back dated those changes to January 1.
Buried among the minutiae of those changes was a tweak to the bases on which appeals are made.
Prior to the change any appeal of conviction - not sentence - could only be made on the ground that no reasonable person could have reasonably come to the conclusion the panel did. That was a notoriously prohibitive standard to achieve.
Now the matter has been simplified. Now the appeal can be made because a party wants the matter heard by a different panel. It is known in law as an appeal de novo and means that the appeal is conducted as a completely new hearing of the evidence.
It also means that the first hearing does not "limit the evidence or carry weight in the hearing before the appeal board".
Any ASADA appeal would be firstly to the AFL Appeals Board. Any appeal has to be "timely" which will make a change from how things have proceeded to date.
WADA though is not required to take the matter to the AFL's internal appeals board and can instead appeal the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The scope of any review is not limited to what the previous tribunal had heard.
Not an end yet, but the end could be in sight.
