Drug probe has no time limit: Fahey John Fahey. Scoffing at calls to hasten the drug inquiries inflicting unprecedented damage on Australia's top football codes, the World Anti-Doping Agency's president says the national sports drug authority should "take whatever time that it takes" to unearth the truth. While sympathetic to frustrated football fans, WADA boss John Fahey has emphasised that enforcing integrity is more important than the reputation of any sporting figure or code. "There's nothing special about AFL or NRL, or rugby union or cricket - the sports that we know so well here - any more than there's something special about cycling in Europe, or athletics or swimming or whatever," Fahey told Fairfax Media on Wednesday. ASADA should take whatever time is necessary to bring it to a conclusion. There is no provision whatsoever for any anti-doping organisation to conclude any inquiries in any time frame. Their obligation is to investigate and inquire without fear or favour. This is what every other sport, outside the major leagues, in the whole world are bound by. Fahey's comments come after Essendon coach James Hird last week said the ASADA probe into the Bombers "has just got to finish ... because it's not fair on so many people." On the same night that Essendon president David Evans suffered a physical breakdown in the club's change rooms, Hird said the ASADA investigation threatened to affect lives permanently. Previously, AFL deputy CEO Gillon McLachlan had stressed the league's desperation to have ASADA's findings delivered before the September finals, saying a resolution to the case "goes to the heart of the integrity of our finals series." Fahey, however, stated this week: "The findings will come when they come. It took 2½ years in America to get to the point where charges were laid against Lance Armstrong and others. The world cup starts next week in track and field in Russia and I haven't heard the IAAF saying these matters involving Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell need to be put aside until after we hold our world cup. No one asks that question. Whilst I have enormous sympathy for the frustration of fans - particularly if it involves the club you support - we have to recognise that above all of this is the integrity of the game and the integrity of sport itself. We follow sport because we believe it's a level playing field; that it's a contest of skills between two different teams or individual athletes. If we haven't got a belief in that because of some external events that are occurring, then we'll stop following sport as fans. Soon to complete his term as WADA president, former NSW premier Fahey is monitoring events in Australian sport as an especially interested observer but says he has had no personal involvement with ASADA related to the NRL and AFL investigations. Throughout the ordeals still tormenting both codes, Fahey has highlighted WADA's guiding principle of "strict liability," which demands that athletes are responsible for whatever enters their body, regardless of whether a prohibited substance is taken intentionally or unintentionally. "You just don't distinguish," he repeated on Wednesday, "The code is the code." Fahey has also consistently cut through apparently blurry lines by underlining that one of the substances in question in both the AFL and NRL cases - AOD-9604 - is clearly a banned substance under WADA's rules, telling Fairfax Media recently: "All that matters for an anti-doping violation, an ADV, is the WADA code. The simple facts here are there's a code, the athlete is bound by that code, the athlete is liable if there's a breach of that code or a violation under that code. Full stop. While noting this week that he has felt pleased by the "very proactive" approach the AFL has taken to its doping scandal, Fahey said: "As for the proportions of it, time will tell. But I'd be confident that the AFL will do what has to be done. I think from what I can see they've been proceeding in that manner. The only thing that I can say is that there's no time frame on what ASADA might do.