A day after apologising for Essendon's supplement fiasco in a sanitary press conference, Bombers chairman David Evans has revealed more information on Dr Ziggy Switkowski's damning report during a tense radio interview on Tuesday morning.
Evans may have hinted that James Hird will be cleared of taking banned substances by ASADA, but he couldn't completely rule out Hird seeing an internal letter warning against the club's now infamous supplement program.
A day after the release of the report on Essendon's 2012 supplement program, Evans was grilled on 3AW's Neil Mitchell Program over Hird's position and whether the coach may have seen the letter from club doctor Bruce Reid raising issues over the Bombers' high performance team.
One of those high performance team members, controversial sport scientist Stephen Dank, has since alleged Hird himself took substances banned under the WADA code.
When asked about these allegations, Evans was initially reluctant to speak about Hird, despite coming out strongly and saying he doesn't believe the club's players took banned substances.
But when queried as to why he was confident the players were in the clear and not Hird, Evans gave the biggest indication yet the coach may be innocent of Dank's claims.
"I'm very comfortable (with) James' position," Evans said.
"That means that when it comes out, you'll hear a story that I think will be fine."
What wasn't fine for Evans is Switkowski's report which details: "Innovative supplement practices and compounds soon appeared - somewhat predictably given the mandate of the High Performance team.
"In particular the rapid diversification into exotic supplements, sharp increase in frequency of injections, the shift to treatment offsite in alternative medicine clinics, emergence of unfamiliar suppliers, marginalization of traditional medical staff etc combine to create a disturbing picture of a pharmacologically experimental environment never adequately controlled or challenged or documented."
The club has said Dr Reid's attempt to document his objections to the high performance program through a letter on January 15 ended when the letter simply didn't get to the club's chief executive Ian Robson or to Evans.
Although Evans couldn't explain how the letter went missing, he was adamant it wasn't caused by 'dishonesty' within the club.
"That letter should have been seen .... (it) did not get to the people it should have got too," Evans said.
"I think it should have got to me, it should have got to the CEO.
"My understanding is that it did not get to the coach but it was a time of ... there was a time of conflict around that time early in the 2012 year between, and the report goes into this, between the high performance team and the doctors and there was things to be sorted out and that led to the confirmation of James Hird's guidelines around the supplements program."
Hird's guidelines - reportedly laid out in an email to Dank on January 15 - said supplements 'must not harm the player' and 'must not be illegal (according to WADA and AFL drug guidelines)'.
However Evans couldn't say whether Hird set out these guidelines in response to Reid's letter.
"That's something that I haven't been able to get to the bottom of yet," Evans said.
"I believe James Hird did not see the letter from Dr Reid.
"As I said to you, it was a time of conflict around the medical staff and the high performance staff ... and James stepped in to set up those guidelines.
"The fact that the right protocols and procedures weren't set up to escalate bad news, that is a failing that's happened as this letter has not got to where it should have got to."
And as for Reid not simply speaking directly to Hird or himself about these concerns, Evans had no real answer.
"Doctor Reid is a man of very high integrity," was Evans response when asked whether Reid had an obligation to pursue why his letter hadn't been acted on.
"It was a period in the club that Ziggy points to, there was confusion, the protocols and procedures that were in place clearly let us down and that's what we have to face up to."