THERE'S no risk. One, actually, helps in part of the treatment for cancer - Mark Thompson, Essendon coach, July 4, 2014.

And there it is. Just when we'd either forgotten, had our thoughts hijacked by the lawyers and sideshow arguments, or maybe could no longer care what this entire Essendon drugs investigation was actually about, Mark Thompson reminded us.

It is about a group of men, some of them teenagers, whose blind faith in those in charge at Essendon Football Club saw them administered drugs their bodies didn't need, all in the self-proclaimed whatever-it-takes pursuit of success. 

Absorb, for a moment, what Thompson said. Essendon players, none of whom had been diagnosed with cancer, were given a drug to treat cancer. Confirmed.

Hey, not only are there no cancer worries down the track for our players, not that Thompson or anyone else at his club will ever know for sure, but hey, they've actually been given an anti-cancer drug.

It is many things, Thompson's statement, mainly a summary of the brazen arrogance with which Essendon went about its operations two years ago.

It is also offensive - to people who actually don't have a choice but to, every single day, take drugs which treat cancer, simply to ensure they stay alive. If you don't have cancer, why take a drug which treats it?

Thompson this year has admirably gone about his role as coach. He has never baulked at addressing the wrongs of the past, and his constant protection of players is leadership at its finest. But his words last week were poorly chosen and delivered.

There was a period of time when Essendon's drugs program was aligned with consent forms signed by its players.

There was also a period when certain substances were administered before those forms were signed.

The AFL Players' Association has confirmed this, and remains doubly concerned as to what happened in this period.

Was the cancer drug administered before or post the consent forms? Maybe both.

In a story which will never have the full truth revealed, facts such as Thompson's confirmation of use of a drug which treats cancer, and the AFLPA's fears of the pre-consent period are crucial to its telling.

Forget all the sideshows. Of who said what to whom on the night before Essendon officially self-reported. The claim of illegality levelled at the joint ASADA-AFL probe. The identity of "the Triple M mum". The AFL's Dr Peter Harcourt's address in Zurich. Essendon chairman Paul Little's belated regret that David Evans asked for the club to be investigated. Former coach James Hird's court action.

Forget all of it and instead focus on the fact that fit, young men were given a drug to treat cancer. And another drug to combat obesity. And other drugs.

Focus, also, on the fact Little was a senior member of the Essendon board when it decided to self-report, and then commission Ziggy Switkowski to investigate the club's actions in a report which found the Bombers, in the late 2011 and 2012 period in question, had combined to "create a disturbing picture of a pharmacologically experimental environment never adequately controlled or challenged or documented within the club in the period under review".

Yet Essendon now will happily sheet all blame back to just a few people. It wants us all to believe that Stephen Dank is to blame for virtually everything, and that he is a man not to be trusted.

Yet as it discredits him at every turn, it trusts him, and demands that everyone else do so too, when he says he didn't give Essendon players WADA-banned drugs.

He may not have, but 34 past and current players have been issued with ASADA show-cause notices relating to alleged use of thymosin Beta 4 during Dank's time at the club.

The full truth, that commodity Hird was initially so desperate to discover, and the one which was supposedly going to put him and everyone at Essendon in a far better place, will never be revealed.

We all need to get our heads around that.