I am more than a little bemused by the reaction on here and in the media towards this hail mary from WADA.
I mean, for ****s sakes, you have Jason Dunstall coming out and saying now that the players should have taken a 6 month ban. Seriously, he said that. Despite the fact they were cleared by a tribunal and ALL THAT'S HAPPENED is an announcement of an appeal.
An appeal is NOT a magic weapon for WADA. The HTB and media are acting as though this is now done. It is far from done. What is little-known is that the losing party from the original decision DO in fact face a somewhat higher burden of proof - and this would have been exactly the same had it been the players appealing a guilty verdict.
WADA are asking that more weight be put on the testimony of Charter and Alavi. Ok then. Why the **** would that happen? On the burden of proof, even if they can argue that the BoP was too high (which is a long way from being certain) they still have to complete the rest of the chain.
Personally, I can only shake my head. Let the hyenas have their fun. I am confident that the same result will be found, its just a shame everyone has to put up with this crap for another year based on what appears to me to be nothing more than a statement being made by global anti-doping authorities. I have watched the WADA AFL debate with interst, and one of the factors I thought in WADA not appealing would be that they don't want to light a long fuse with a sport like AFL. Well, they may have just lit that fuse.