A three-week holiday for taking a banned performance-enhancing drug.

Seriously?

No wonder many of Australia’s leading swimmers and track and field athletes are up in arms.

ASADA’s 18-month investigation into Cronulla’s peptides program of 2011 looks to have finally reached a conclusion after all 10 players still involved in the NRL competition accepted back-dated 12-month bans on Friday which will expire on November 21.

The bans effectively mean the majority of those players will miss just three games for being hit with what former ASADA boss Richard Ings continued to label this week as “very serious charges”.

For the players who have had the whole drama hanging over their heads for two seasons and were faced with huge legal bills if they continued to fight the charges, it appears ASADA and WADA simply made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

From the outside looking in, the NRL has done remarkably well to broker a deal with Australia’s and the world’s anti-doping bodies, especially with the matter involving the AFL and Essendon still well short of any resolution.

But has justice been served in the NRL?

Have the guilty been punished?

That might come later down the track with ASADA likely to continue to pursue support staff who implemented the doping program.

Players such as NSW skipper Paul Gallen will now have to live with their reluctant admissions as a drug cheats – even if it carries a considerable caveat because the substances were taken unwillingly and without their knowledge.

And the players really had little choice to take the deal now rather than face a far larger suspension further down the track.

A number of Australian Olympians have taken aim at the length of the suspensions.

Olympic swimming gold medallist Melanie Schlanger tweeted that she “felt sad for sport today” due to the abbreviated nature of the bans.

Commonwealth discus champion Benn Harradine wondered whether it is now “possible to refuse a test from asada on the grounds of incompetence”.

Given the lack of concrete evidence ASADA too was backed into a corner.

The “darkest day in Australian sport” has been a thorn in the side of rugby league for two seasons now.

As a result the NRL has streamlined its governance regulations and brought in one of the world’s most stringent testing programs.

Maybe the game will come out the other side the better for it.

Not so ASADA. Their methods, or lack of, justify the touted Senate or judicial inquiry.