"The case did not revolve around what the other client of the pharmacy may or may not have got or received or been prescribed. The admission was there from the pharmacy: 'We got it wrong.'"
he quote from Antony Davies, judicial officer appointed to examine EPCR's case against Munster prop James Cronin, summed up a starting point in a race apparently already run. The only issue was how to sum it up.
After a slow kick-off from EPCR, organsiers of the Champions Cup, Davies had been given a bundle of documents relating to the case of Cronin's positive dope test following the Heineken Champions Cup tie against Racing 92 in Thomond Park last November.
From this pile he had to see if it all made sense, if the facts as presented stood up. If not he'd have to roll up his sleeves and go digging. As it transpired, he reckoned it all added up.
The defendant had his hands up. Well, one hand. The supplier of the banned substance - the pharmacy that had filled his prescription - had both hands up. Davies didn't need to go looking for a smoking gun. Locked and loaded, it was all about making the punishment fit the crime.
We approached Davies 10 days ago, via EPCR, when writing for last weekend's Sunday Independent. We were told that Newstalk's Off The Ball programme were also keen and that he would wait to see what the weekend's coverage of the case would bring, and if he felt he could add clarity to the case then he would follow up with Off The Ball.
So on Wednesday night, Davies went on Newstalk. When a case has you scurrying for an actuary to work out the odds on it being possible then the explanation needs to be good.
It has to address the fantastic nature of the circumstances and present as detailed a sequence of events as possible.
By any standards, a professional rugby player being given medication meant for someone else, with the same name, who has a similar medical issue, that needed treatment via a substance on WADA's banned list, and for that player then to be called randomly for a drugs test the following night, is an extraordinary sequence of events.
Listening to Antony Davies last week, he didn't seem struck by it all. Having moved around rugby's disciplinary paddock for the last 20 years between the (English) RFU, World Rugby and EPCR, he has seen a lot.
Still, presenter Joe Molloy wondered, in addition to reviewing the papers would you not want to cross-examine the player yourself?
"I did consider it but I felt that all the paperwork covered all the bases," Davies said. "It dealt with anything that I would have had to ask him and it was not so much me making up a decision on whether I believed him or not, that had already been pre-done to the satisfaction of EPCR's lawyers . . . So those questions had already been answered to their satisfaction.
"If they hadn't been it would not have come to me to look at, to measure against the other cases and to endorse, or to refuse to endorse."
If that sounds like Cronin had been questioned orally by EPCR's lawyers in putting the case together then maybe you're getting a mixed message.
There was back and forth between Cronin's lawyers and EPCR's, but no cross-examination. If the pharmacist was taking the lion's share of the blame in this from early in the piece, does it matter? Yes, it does. Hearing first-hand the player's version of events, how he had taken without question what was in the bag, would have been, at the very least, interesting.
On match day, by which time he had taken nine tablets of the banned medication, as well as the antibiotic he had been prescribed, did he not think of asking the team doctor was all this really necessary? Paint the picture for us James. These are legitimate questions.
Molloy also asked about the other client, the one whose medication had inadvertently found its way into Cronin's system. Did EPCR's lawyers contact the other James Cronin? "I don't know that," Davies told Molloy. "That wasn't in the papers. There was to some extent . . . in the papers that I got there were redacted parts because of GDPR, and those parts related to the other client of the pharmacy."
EPCR told us last week that confirmation of the other client was not in the papers because they had no jurisdiction to compel the pharmacy to give out information about any client other than James Cronin, the rugby player.
But the pharmacy must have been able to provide some information, or why else would Davies have included the following in his written judgement on the case: "The labels on the product packaging included . . . (words redacted) . . . and so he (understandably) thought that they were the medications that had been prescribed to him by his team doctor."
In a list of inconveniences for James Cronin, and Munster, surely top of the list is the mystery about the 'other client'.
Had that person been willing or able to provide some corroboration of their unintentional involvement in the case then the story would have been so much easier for player and province to tell. Munster say that GDPR precludes them from making contact with this person.
But if they had asked the pharmacist to make contact, how could that have compromised anyone’s rights?
Instead the questions continue: Will Cronin take legal action against the pharmacy where it is understood there are close family connections to current members of the Munster squad?
Will Munster continue to do business with the same pharmacy? They say they will "continue to use the services of available registered pharmacies". Will Munster carry out an independent review of their practices and procedures to reduce the risk of another lightning strike? No.
It's unlikely then Munster will acknowledge that such a sequence of events demands something other than a few paragraphs saying they're glad it's all over. This might all go away, but until Munster and Cronin tell their story then what appeared to Antony Davies as a neat bundle will remain a lot of loose ends.
