The battle between AFL and NRL has spilled into the performance-enhancing drug affair domain, with the Rugby League chief executive speaking to Prime Minister Julia Gillard about his frustrations at an alleged deal between the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and Essendon.
Speaking with 3AW Breakfast, Roy Masters, a former rugby league coach and Fairfax Media columnist who broke the story, said it appeared the issue boiled down to a misunderstanding.
"If you look at it from the most benign way of all, you would have to say that it's a misunderstanding perhaps,” he said.
"Essendon were given a range of sanctions, of which zero sanction right down the bottom was a possibility, but never believed to be an option by the Bombers."
However upon hearing the prospect of Essendon players not receiving any sanction when the NRL’s Cronulla Sharks faced a minimum six-month ban, NRL chief Dave Smith took his complaint to the top – the Prime Minister.
Mr Masters told Ross and John the NRL became aware of the possibility of no sanction for Essendon players, they put their enquiry to a lawyer acting for ASADA who denied that to be the case.
ASADA counsel, John Marshall SC, the next day phoned Cronulla’s legal team to say he had misled them, supplied them with the appropriate documentation and withdrew his representation of ASADA – for whom he had acted for 20 years.
"Nonetheless, this so-called zero sanction for Essendon and the minimum of six months for the NRL, and the various versions of it... the in between is the confusion," Roy Masters said.