Essendon Footy players CLEARED of all doping charges

The 34 players involved in the AFL doping scandal at the Essendon Bombers footy club in 2012 have all been cleared of wrongdoing by the Australian Sports Anti-Drug Agency (ASADA), and are free of any sanctions, suspensions, or other penalties that would have been handed down had the tribunal found otherwise. 

That group includes a massive number from Essendon itself, so many that the Dons have been preparing retired players and minor leaguers in case their roster was decimated by a guilty verdict today. It also includes stars Angus Monfries from Port Adelaide and Stewart Crameri of the Western Bulldogs, both of whom had moved on from the club since 2012.

Here are a slough of articles from AFL.com.au that hit the topic from all angles:

Thirty-four present and former Essendon players cleared of all wrong-doing.
Here's a blow-by-blow of the day's events coming out of the courtroom, plus the reactions around the sport...
The actual statement from the ASADA tribunal...
A very important detail, in my opinion: the repenting of Essendon head coach James Hird, who in any reckoning of this sorrowful tale is guilty of no less than atrocious judgment, if not far worse.
The reaction of the players involved, like superstar and Brownlow medal winner Jobe Watson, whose comments include, "I'd forgotten what it was like to play and not have this dark cloud over my head."
Where the Essendon club goes from here...specifically, into round one on Sunday against the powerhouse Sydney Swans.
The statement of Essendon chairman Paul Little, hoping for an end to the nightmare.
And the final word on the subject (from our perspective), from AFL president/CEO Gillan McLaughlin, hoping that there won't be any appeals and that the league and its personnel can get on with the business of playing footy again.

From my perspective, here's what it means: The tribunals got this right. This was not (from all reports) a player-driven cheating scandal, like the Americans Lance Armstrong or Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez. The players involved were given supplements, not unlike the league-approved vitamins and medicines they are often given for strength and pain-relief and the like. This was a club-driven program, with the people who ran the show in the wrong: trainer, coach, and so forth. The penalty for the head medico is still coming sometime in April, but the coach served a one-year ban (I'm not sure it shouldn't have been longer), the club was banished from the playoffs (one week before they started - an unprecedented hammer!) and paid a $2M fine, and the penalties for the others involved from the administrative end seem, from this distance, to have been punitive enough. The players were victims, and the tribunal saw that.

And now, it's time to move on - for Essendon, and for footy.