AUGUST 2014. Players from NRL club Cronulla, staring down a potentially long and ugly absence from their sport, reluctantly - with some even in tears - accept a deal from Australia's anti-doping body.
 
It is a difficult, emotional, gut-wrenching call. A stigma is attached to their decision. But the players are to miss just three matches of rugby league, and more importantly, it forever removes from their lives any further, and virtually guaranteed, sanctions relating to the drugs they took in a past season.
 
Today, many of those players are no longer at the Sharks. But their main man and captain, Paul Gallen, is. After 19 weeks and 17 matches of the 2016 NRL season, Cronulla sits atop the ladder.
 
August 2014. The Essendon Football Club board refuses to even consider accepting a potential Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority deal to make their equally complex and similar problem simply disappear.
 
Today, 34 players from the Bombers' list in 2012 are serving 12-month bans from Australian Football.
 
Many of the still-listed 12 players from that time are this week being photographed partying on the Croatian A-list celebrity island hangout of Hvar. Last week it was Pamplona, Spain. Before that, New York.
 
After 17 weeks and 16 games of the 2016 AFL season, Essendon sits last on the ladder.
 
As good as those holiday snaps look, every single one of those Essendon players smashing beers, moving to the latest Drake track, and diving into some beautiful ocean or equally appealing pool would give anything to be like their Cronulla counterparts and have just finished a training session in preparation for a tilt at a premiership.
 
In their absence, their Bomber replacements will effectively be playing for the wooden spoon at Etihad Stadium this Sunday, against the Brisbane Lions.
 
Time over again, and with the Cronulla case in front of us as evidence of what could have been, surely everyone associated with Essendon would love those August 2014 moments all over again.
 
Yes, there was a finals series on the horizon that year. Yes, there was not just a belief, but a conviction that players were innocent. Yes, there was going to be stigma attached to accepting an ASADA deal.
 
It was pigheadedness and arrogance which stymied any proper and thorough analysis of backing down. The AFL had tried constantly, and quite aggressively, particularly in August 2014, to convince the club of the merits of so doing.

James Hird in 2015 tells the media his time as coach has ended. Picture: AFL Media

 
Cronulla, albeit without the looming appearance in a finals series, understood the ASADA deal was too good to be true when lined up against the unknown of continuing to fight, and the certainty of a messy end.
 
AFL people regularly look down at NRL people when it comes to how business is run. Regularly, with good reason.
 
AFL people like to manage outcomes to their liking. Many think it is the only way to reach a decision.
 
At the high point of crisis in 2014, when proper and serious sanctions were all but guaranteed without backing down, Cronulla had the "luxury" of being run by people not responsible for the decisions which had ASADA at its door.
 
Essendon was still controlled by those who were in charge at the time when proper protocols were deliberately, arrogantly and disgracefully bypassed by coaching and football staff, and players.
 
Speak to certain high-end players from other clubs even today, and there is no sympathy for the Bombers players. None.
 
There was always a high price which had to be paid for what Essendon did in 2012. It just didn't need to be as great as the one it ultimately chose to transact.
 
Cronulla is proof of that.
 
Essendon Football Club is now a far better-run place than it was back then. It has respect for the competition. It has sought to remedy its woeful ways. It is apologetic. It deserves to be able to move on.
 
On Sunday at 1.10pm AEST, the Bombers, last on the ladder, play the Lions, second-last on the ladder.
 
In true AFL style when it comes to such low-ladder match-ups at this late stage of a season, a loss is a win, as access to the No.1 draft pick is far more lucrative than four premiership points.
 
On Sunday at 2pm AEST, the Sharks, first on the ladder, play the Knights, last on the ladder. In 10 weeks, they rightly expect to be playing in a Grand Final.
 
Twitter: @barrettdamian