That Essendon coach James Hird has a different recollection of the 2011 meeting in which he was warned by the AFL to avoid peptides where his players were concerned, is not surprising.

Hird, whose example in embracing and pushing the risky drug program in which his loyal players were regularly injected with questionable substances, still has not come to grips with the perilous position in which he finds himself.

This is despite the fact that significant chunks of evidence gathered by ASADA and the AFL has not been kind to Hird. As the ASADA findings are put together in Canberra and the AFL Commission braces itself for one of its toughest decisions, just how the competition handles the fall from grace of perhaps its most beloved hero of the past two decades remains the most fascinating human dilemma of this sorry saga.

Hird hired the hard-line spin doctor Ian Hanke as his media adviser when it became clear he would require one. Hanke on Tuesday did not deny Hird had met the AFL in 2011 over peptides, but indicated, as the club did again on Wednesday, that it would be wrong to interpret the meeting in a negative way.