That is a fair point but I still have great difficulty accepting the timing as just coincidental with the restart of the season.
If the season had not been interrupted by Coronavirus I really think this announcement would have been made months ago.
ASADA has plenty of form for this sort of stunt the highwater mark or should that be the low water mark being the farcical 'blackest day in Australian sport' farce which was clearly manipulated by the then federal government for political purposes.
Apart from all that I would presume that assuming these drugs are illegal any investigation would be the provence of the police. ASADA should just handover whatever information they have at the time to the police and then step back and concentrate on handling the test reults.
None of this should let Xerri of the hook if he has done the wrong thing but in the broader interests of the game it could have been handled much better.
The start of the season proper was only months ago, when ASADA had no idea the season would be suspended. If they had the results all that time and were simply awaiting the ‘opportune’ moment to grab the most headlines, I imagine the start of the season would have been a good time, however they clearly didn’t release the results 2 days out then.
So either they had the results then and we’re hoping for an even better time to release to maximise media exposure, or they we’re pursuing investigative strategies or they didn’t and had no information to release. It’s only Hooper’s word, but he said the specific combination of drugs taken were very complex and it has taken this long to unravel it all, as the official explanation.
As to handing over investigations, I am sure they have provided information to police, but they have their own investigations to conduct as well. Player, medical staff and coaching interviews, phone examinations, bank records and on-going testing and so forth. I imagine if a club in a high profile sport gets a positive test, I imagine protocol would require an immediate test of every player in the squad, particularly after the last round of Cronulla PED issues...
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I do not know what he was thinking.
What I do know is he has been asked to explain the extraordinary time lag between conducting the test and announcing its result and he hasn't even given the courtesy of a reply.
James Hooper on Fox said the official explanation is that the specific combination of drugs required very lengthy and complex testing and those results have only just been unveiled.