THE AFL’s reputation as the best managed sport in Australia took an absolute hammering during the ASADA storm, while the NRL proved it is no longer a basket case.

This is the conclusion reached by former ASADA chief Aurora Andruska revealed in an explosive new book.

News.com.au has attained an exclusive extract of author Chip Le Grand’s The Straight Dope — an inside account of the Essendon and Cronulla doping scandals — released today.

The extract below reveals the extent to which the AFL’s joint investigation with ASADA into Essendon’s 2012 supplements program derailed the entire process.

AFL REPLACED NRL AS UNTRUSTWORTHY CODE

THROUGHOUT the doping scandal at Essendon and Cronulla, there was a widespread misconception about the AFL and the NRL and their preparedness to tackle drugs in sport.

Where the AFL was seen as a natural ally of ASADA, the NRL was considered a problem child.

Having dealt with both codes throughout the most testing of circumstances, former ASADA chief executive Aurora Andruska believes the reality is very different.

“When I first came to ASADA people said you can trust the AFL, you can’t trust the NRL,’ former ASADA chief executive Aurora Andruska says.

Although the AFL was the last professional sports body to adopt WADA’s protocols, when the drug scandal breaks it is the AFL rather than the NRL that is perceived to wear the white hat in anti-doping matters.

On 7 February 2013, the use of prohibited peptides is assumed to be more widespread at NRL clubs than AFL clubs.

The AFL has an in-house integrity unit in place, the NRL doesn’t.

ASADA has established a close working relationship with the AFL in a way it hasn’t with the NRL.

The AFL is more sophisticated than the NRL in the work it is doing developing blood profiles of players and gathering other anti-doping intel.

By the time Aurora Andruska leaves ASADA, her view of the respective codes has changed entirely.

Although the AFL is quick to join ASADA’s investigation into Essendon, Andruska soon doubts the league’s motives.

Where the NRL, for the most part, leaves ASADA to do its work, the anti-doping body feels intense pressure from the AFL to complete its investigation into Essendon before the 2013 finals series.

In contrast to the AFL tactic of seeking to influence ASADA through government back channels, NRL chief executive Dave Smith and his deputy Jim Doyle hold weekly telephone hook-ups with Andruska and her senior staff every Friday.

The NRL is kept informed of any developments in the investigation but do not meddle in ASADA’s work.

After ASADA’s decision to provide an interim report to the AFL triggers a damaging falling out between the investigative partners and, very nearly, a Federal Court dispute, ASADA refuses a request from the NRL to provide a similar report.

The NRL, not for the first time, is frustrated at perceived bias. However, it takes ASADA’s advice and compiles its own report, which forms the basis of disciplinary action against Cronulla, its coach Shane Flanagan and its former high-performance manager Trent Elkin for failing to protect the health and welfare of footballers under their care.

“They did the right thing,’ Andruska says.

“They produced their own report which they put to their board and their board made their decision. As we look back at the history of it, it has gone very smoothly for them.”

The NRL, without the involvement of ASADA, imposes sanctions against Cronulla and its coach strikingly similar to those accepted by Essendon and, begrudgingly, Bombers coach James Hird.

Cronulla is fined $1 million with $400,000 of that suspended.

It is less than half the fine imposed on Essendon but, in relative terms, a higher cost for the cash-poor club to meet. Flanagan, like Hird, is suspended for a year.

He is now back coaching the Sharks.

Trent Elkin is deregistered, with the career-ending penalty later reduced to twenty-one months’ suspension on appeal.

The NRL’s actions against Cronulla and its staff are dealt with entirely by the league’s judicial system. There are no Supreme Court writs. There is no Federal Court case and appeal.

No one challenges the legality of ASADA’s investigation into Cronulla.

Throughout the doping scandal, the AFL is privately contemptuous of the NRL and its Welsh-born chief executive Dave Smith, a virtual unknown in Australian sporting circles before he is introduced to the nation on the blackest day in Australian sport.

In a moment of characteristic hubris, AFL boss Andrew Demetriou describes the ASADA and AFL joint investigation of Essendon as a template for future anti-doping efforts.

No one would suggest such a thing now.

The strength of the NRL position throughout the doping scandal is its separation from ASADA. Its disciplinary procedures are not conflated with ASADA’s anti-doping interests; its commercial interests are not blurred with anti-doping outcomes.

The AFL instinctively, invariably, seeks to control. There are two lessons the AFL can learn from the NRL’s handling of the doping scandal: how to accept the limits of your own influence, and when to let other organisations, particularly statutory government agencies like ASADA, do their job.

This is an edited extract from The Straight Dope by Chip Le Grand (MUP, RRP $29.99, eBook $19.99), out this week. mup.com.au