It is staggering to think that the AFL has more investigative staff at its disposal in the nation's sporting capital than ASADA, which entered 2014 with only one full-time investigator in its Melbourne office. In terms of resources, ASADA is closer to the Port Fairy police station than the FBI.

While the AFL has beefed up its integrity unit by hiring a distinguished former detective, the government-backed body that has been leading the investigation into Essendon and Cronulla - dubbed the largest and most complex of its type in Australian history - started 2014 with its Melbourne office shrinking from three investigators to one.

Yes, a retired judge has been appointed by the Feds to review and assist ASADA in its investigations into the AFL and NRL clubs, but the Abbott government - and strong sporting competitions such as the AFL, which also funds ASADA - need to ask themselves whether they really want a clean sport, or merely want the appearance of clean sports. If they wish to keep high tech cheating at bay, to keep up with the Marion Joneses, it will cost more money.

The previous Labor government - which thundered about the evils of ''cheating with the help of criminals'' - talked big, without building a commensurate ASADA, which certainly isn't the powerful body of popular perception.

ASADA cannot police the AFL, NRL, A-League and ARU competitions plus cycling, athletics et al, conclude the Essendon investigation and deal with every other potential probe with such a skinny investigative unit. ASADA will only say it has been resourced ''adequately'' for the tasks at hand.

When the Essendon/Cronulla cases detonated, ASADA doubled its investigative team - that's for all sports - from 6 to 12.

But with the recent loss of two Melbourne investigators - that dozen is understood to have contracted.

The AFL will soon have an integrity unit of 14. That's one competition. ASADA is responsible for keeping ALL competitive sports clean - cycling alone would provide enough work for several investigators.

It is conceivable that ASADA is about to hire replacements, that the anti-doping cavalry are coming and that the Abbott government - noting links between bikies and steroid distribution - will find the money that is urgently needed. But it is also clear that governments, plural, have not recognised what the fight against sophisticated doping requires.

Until Stephen Dank's programs at Essendon and Cronulla came to ASADA's attention, the anti-doping body relied heavily upon testing.

But the global sporting - and chemical - landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years. Testing is largely irrelevant to major doping cases, a pop-gun in the war on drug cheats. Lance Armstrong was hung on evidence and a laborious investigation; the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, who has accepted a ban for cheating, was likewise nailed via testimony. The celebrated BALCO cases against Olympic heroine Marion Jones and another power-hitting baseballer, Barry Bonds, again, were uncovered without the benefit of positive tests.

Investigating doping cases is expensive. It requires interviews, follow-ups, paper trails. It needs manpower.

That the investigation into Essendon was a joint venture between ASADA and the AFL was not ideal. If possible, ASADA should have done this solo. Sporting bodies have too many conflicts of interest to be trusted with anti-doping investigations (see Armstrong). But one can see why the AFL was brought in for the joint investigation - in part, ASADA needed the resources.

Sporting bodies, too, live in their own universes and tend to be unaware of doping events in other sports that might overlap. Drugs from an anti-ageing clinic can end up in the arms of footballers from different codes. ASADA can track the overlapping leads.

If ASADA has been slow to conclude the Essendon and Cronulla cases, it's possible that resources have not been sufficient for such a complicated investigation, and one that has not had the benefit of Dank's co-operation. ''Adequate'' simply isn't enough to keep sport clean.