ASADA chief Ben McDevitt favours a national sports court to hear all cases in the first instance, with an appeal right to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in order to remove the inherent conflict of interest from sports, such as the AFL, NRL and cricket, who choose their own judges. Alternatively, the existing 20 CAS arbitrators in Australia could be drafted to hear cases in the first instance, with a separate appeal division. Either system requires considerable resources and possible federal legislation.

New Zealand, Great Britain and Canada all have national sports tribunals that hear anti-doping cases.

In the eventually resolved Essendon case, an AFL-appointed anti-doping tribunal initially found that ASADA had not proved 34 past and present Bombers players had used performance-enhancing drugs. ASADA's antiquated legislation compelled it to challenge the verdict at an AFL-appointed Appeals tribunal.

Fearing an "in-house decision", McDevitt encouraged World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the global body to whom ASADA is responsible, to appeal the case to CAS's headquarter tribunal based in Switzerland. This court overturned the AFL decision and the Essendon players subsequently challenged this verdict to the final court of appeal, a Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT).

Finally, on Tuesday evening, years after the wrenching saga began, the SFT, in its quaint language, decided the appeal by the Essendon 34 "is not entertained". Had the Essendon case been heard initially by an independent sports court and appealed to Australia's CAS arbiters, perhaps including Jim Spigelman QC who was one of the three arbitrators who sat on the Lausanne tribunal, it may not have taken the exhaustive appeal procedure now finally resolved.

After all, it had a very international perspective, involving the Montreal based WADA, a London barrister heading one Swiss court and another anonymous Swiss tribunal accepting submissions in writing only, delivering a verdict in German.

A separate sports appeal court would also mean ASADA challenges verdicts to it, rather than chart the course it did in the Essendon case, where WADA appealed.

Many of Australia's non-professional sports choose to take doping cases direct to CAS, rather than follow the AFL and NFL in having their own domestic tribunals.

Australia's Olympic athletes who have been charged with a doping breach have their cases heard by a tribunal convened by their international federation, meaning an Australian international-class swimmer appears before judges appointed by the International Swimming Federation (FINA).

However, an October 5 Declaration of the 5th Olympic Summit in Lausanne resolved to set up a separate division of CAS to deal only with anti-doping cases involving international athletes.

This would render redundant the need for international federations to appoint panels to hear anti- doping cases involving their own athletes.

In other words, what McDevitt has proposed for Australia – removing sports from hearing cases involving their own athletes – has recently been enacted internationally.

Paradoxically, the AFL, who became answerable to a Swiss court in the Essendon case, may oppose a system where their cases are confined to Australia. Their non-international status as a sport means they have no appeal to the new anti-doping division of CAS.

Professional players' associations may prefer to have cases heard by their own experienced tribunals that consist of eminent jurists, such as former High Court judge, Ian Callinan QC, who chairs the NRL tribunal.

Any anti–doping reform would apply only to performance-enhancing drugs, with sports continuing to take responsibility for detection and education surrounding illicit drugs The revelations coming out of the Russian sports system, with state-sponsored doping, demonstrate the need to protect against government intervention at any level.

In a press release last month, following a meeting of 17 national anti-doping chiefs in Copenhagen, McDevitt called for major reform in the fight to protect clean athletes.

"I doubt the architects of the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC) contemplated a deception of the type and scale as perpetrated by the Russian state. If they did, they certainly did not equip WADA with the tools to deal with it.

"If we want real change, WADA need to have the authority to make decisions, not just recommendations. They need more powers to investigate and sanction for an extended range of violations to cater for the sort of wholesale abuses of the code we saw perpetrated by Russia." The recent Olympic Summit called for "the anti-doping system to be independent from sports organisations".