• Cotchin and Mitchell awarded 2012 Brownlow Medal
AS FAR as the AFL and the football public is concerned, the decision to jointly award Trent Cotchin and Sam Mitchell the 2012 Brownlow Medal forfeited by Jobe Watson, should mark the closure of a sordid episode that has plagued the game since February 2013.
It may continue on as the 'Essendon 34' pursue possible civil action against the Bombers, but such proceedings will take place well away from prying eyes and will surely be cloaked in the tightest of confidentiality clauses.
And we are nearly at the end of the Lachie Whitfield saga, which has resulted in a six-month ban for him and 12 months for both former Greater Western Sydney officials Graeme Allan and Craig Lambert for their involvement of a breach of the AFL's player rules.
• AFL gives Whitfield a six-month ban
What still remains unclear is whether the Giants will lose any draft picks. They're up for the fight, the Giants, which raises the fascinating spectre of a club still largely attached to the teat of the AFL taking on its primary benefactor.
But if you think the words 'ASADA', 'WADA' and 'AFL' will now disappear from your news feed, then think again.
With no pending cases hanging over their heads, that makes now the time for the respective bodies to get together and look at all aspects of the code and in particular, whether it applies to team sport.
The AFL is quite strong that, as it currently stands, the drugs code doesn't deal with some of the complexities of team sport. Drugs in sport and the issues that arise from positive tests, are evolving faster than the rules surrounding them can be re-written.
There are those within football who would like to see the AFL totally disassociate itself from the entire WADA code. They say the willingness of the game and the players to embrace their voluntary illicit drugs policy is an indicator that they would just as rigidly self-police performance-enhancing drug use as well.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are those, such as Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), who said recently that sporting leagues should get out of policing their drug policies entirely and leave it up to bodies such as ASADA, WADA and so on.
As in most cases, the future for the AFL is somewhere in the middle. Like it or not, the AFL is tied to ASADA. To walk away from the national sports drug agency is to perhaps run afoul of the Federal Government and the state governments around Australia.
The AFL might be the richest sport in the country and about to divvy up the spoils of a $2.5 billion media rights agreement, but it is partly beholden to the public purse strings when it comes to funding for infrastructure, which in the case of football is public space and amenities.
The AFL is embarking on a huge growth phase with a particular emphasis on women and multicultural engagement. It needs a healthy partnership with government to help pay for it and the politicians and bureaucrats won't likely want to work with a sport that is seen to 'go rogue' on the issue of drug enforcement.
Then again, there might be votes in seeing to have worked with football, so now that the window for talking has opened, perhaps we might see AFL boss Gillon McLachlan make a few trips to Canberra over the next few months to see whether there is a way forward for a revised WADA code. A code that keeps footy clean while acknowledging that our game and, say, Olympic swimming, cycling and athletics, are entirely different beasts and must be treated as such.
