FINALLY, after two years of grandstanding, victim playing and delusionary flights of idiocy, the Essendon supplements scandal is rounding third base and heading for the home plate.

Last Friday, 34 current and former Essendon players received revised show cause notices, including evidence the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority had gathered with and without the assistance of the AFL.

For many of the players involved, this week will be a sobering wake-up call as they digest the magnitude of ASADA’s case against them and begin to fully contemplate, perhaps for the first time, the enormity of the challenge before them.

Whether the players have deliberately buried their collective heads in the sand or just listened to the defective advice of the Bomber camp is not clear. What is clear is that many did not appreciate just how monumental the task of avoiding sanctions altogether would be, despite the assurances they’ve received along the journey.

The Kool-Aid has been flowing freely at Bomberland and it’s not just the blinkered band of duffel-coated supporters who have repeatedly indulged in that toxic thirst-quencher. The diversionary tactics employed by the Essendon administration, including the ill-fated Federal Court action, have bamboozled many people.

But even among Essendon’s harshest critics there is a belief that the players are innocent and need not punishment, but empathy. The popular opinion within footy circles, which has flowed through to many fans, is that the players are without fault in this sordid affair.

That flawed logic is typical of how footballers are treated: like kids instead of professional athletes, who are ultimately responsibility for whatever substances enter their bodies.

As far as much of the footy world is concerned, the highly paid and well supported adults should not be held to the same standard expected of a 16-year-old swimmer or gymnast. Under the World Anti-Doping Agency’s strict liability principle, every athlete is responsible for what is in their body. There is no “get out of jail free card” for those who have taken a banned substance unknowingly or been duped by coaches, doctors or support staff.

Under the WADA code, athletes who demonstrate they took a banned drug inadvertently can have their punishment reduced by up to 75 per cent, but they still face suspension. It is not necessary that intent, fault, negligence or knowing use on the athlete’s part be demonstrated in order to establish an anti-doping violation for use of a prohibited substance.

It may seem harsh, but they are the rules that every athlete covered by the code must abide by — including AFL players. Indeed, if we are going to make a distinction between footballers and other athletes, then surely it is that their culpability is greater given their ample support networks and the resources at their disposable.

Your average athlete, working a full-time job to support their sporting pursuit, does not have a club welfare manager and doctor, personal player manager, as well as a well-funded professional players’ association to call upon for free advice and guidance.

Over the years, there hasn’t been much public sympathy for those banned for inadvertent use of banned substances. The Australian public didn’t shed a tear for 16-year-old gymnast Andreea Raducan when she was stripped of her Olympic gold for taking two flu tablets given to her by a team doctor at the Sydney Games. The teenager, whose petite 37kg frame contributed to the positive test, was shown little mercy for the doctor’s incompetence.

Sympathy was also in short supply last year when javelin champion Jarrod Bannister was given a 20-month ban for breaching ASADA’s Athlete Whereabouts Program after a series of administrative bungles saw him miss three tests over an 18-month period. There was no suggestion that Bannister was deliberately trying to avoid tests.

The strength of the WADA code is in part due to its inflexibility. It is foolish to compare its application to the criminal justice system, a mistake many in football continue to make.

St Kilda’s Ahmed Saad was banned for 18 months for having a banned substance contained in a protein drink. Saad’s failure to check the ingredients of the widely available sports drink seems a lesser misdeed than that committed by Essendon players who participated in a regimen involving the injection and consumption of a series of questionable substances.

In all the talk about duty of care, corporate governance and pharmacological environments, little has been said about player accountability. Not once did the players bother to alert the AFLPA or their individual managers to what was happening at the club.

Can you really be an unwitting victim if you submit to being repeatedly injected with substances that a simple Google search would reveal as highly suspect?

As a footy fan, it is hard not to feel compassion for players, particularly when you read about what Paddy Ryder and his family have endured, but we must refrain from treating the players differently from every other athlete covered by the anti-doping code.

The belief among many close to the investigation is that Essendon’s supplement program was more sophisticated and elaborate than the one in place at the Cronulla Sharks. If the show cause notices proceed to infraction notices and penalties, it is reasonable to expect that Essendon players will cop penalties that are harsher than the backdated 12-month bans, effectively a three-week ban, handed to Sharks players.