Doping-Australia watchdog hands Essendon case to WADA

MELBOURNE, April 20 (Reuters) - Australia's national anti-doping agency has decided not to appeal the decision to acquit 34 professional Australian Rules footballers of drugs charges and handed the case over to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The Australian Football League's (AFL) anti-doping tribunal last month found the 34 former and current players of the Essendon Bombers club not guilty of taking banned supplement Thymosin beta-4. Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) chief executive Ben McDevitt said the decision not to appeal the verdicts had been informed by legal advice. The only avenue for ASADA to appeal would have been through the AFL's own anti-doping tribunal, which McDevitt decided would only delay WADA's consideration of the matter. "I have therefore arranged to provide the entire case file encompassing all 35 matters to WADA for its independent review," he said in a statement on Monday. "This is in accordance with global anti-doping protocols. WADA will then be able to make an independent decision as to whether to exercise its appeal options." ASADA has been under fire in the wake of the verdict, which came over two years after the agency and the AFL launched a joint investigation into the club's supplements regime. The saga has overshadowed Australia's richest football code for over two seasons, with allegations of impropriety being made from all sides. An independent review in 2013 commissioned by Essendon castigated the club's management for governance failures that produced a "disturbing picture of a pharmacologically experimental environment" during their 2012 season. Essendon, one of the AFL's oldest and most successful teams, were subsequently barred from the competition's 2013 playoffs, slapped with a record fine and had their head coach James Hird banned for 12 months for bringing the league into disrepute. With no positive drug tests recorded and having failed to compel key witnesses to sign sworn statements, ASADA brought a case to the tribunal it admitted was circumstantial but believed strong enough to lead to convictions. ASADA had said it would wait until the AFL tribunal delivered its verdict on controversial sports scientist Dank, who ran Essendon's supplements programme in 2012, before deciding whether to appeal. Dank was found guilty of 10 breaches of the AFL's anti-doping code last Friday, including "trafficking, attempting to traffic and complicity in matters related to a range of prohibited substances". Dank denies any wrongdoing and said at the weekend he plans to appeal the verdict and any punishment handed down at an AFL hearing on May 5. (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney in Sydney, editing by Ian Ransom)