The NRL players that fessed up have been dealt with.
Note the piece doesn't say when ASADA contacted Aiton. They have openly named him as one of the 17 & issued him with a show cause notice.
5 current & 12 former players were sent show cause notices.
These show cause notices were issued to all 17 at the same time, in mid August 2014. They had 10 days to respond.
10 NRL based players did deals to accept bans backdated to November 2013, meaning Paul Gallen, Jeremy Smith & Matthew Wright will miss the Four Nations.
Ben Pomeroy from Catalans & Aiton allegedly turned down the deal.
WADA accepted that the punishments handed down by ASADA were appropriate and would not challenge them
Any sanction handed down by a national ADA is enforceable by WADA upon athletes who may no longer be playing in that country.
The substances detected by ASADA are on the WADA list, so there is no escape for anyone found guilty.
Aiton & Pomeroy not taking the deal suggests they believe they were not involved & have been wrongly named, or that they knew they were in trouble & thought getting out of Australia would get them off the hook.
Hetherington is putting pressure on the RFL so he can find a way out for Aiton if needed.
Very clever tactic which means the RFL has to be completely clear on what it has signed up to with UKADA & WADA.
