AFL boss Andrew Demetriou admits the league asked ASADA to speed up investigation Boss ... Andrew Demetriou admits the league speed up ASADA. AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou says the league asked ASADA to complete its investigation into Essendon by early August so it could manage expectations leading into the finals series. It was put to Demetriou on Tuesday that comments made by his NRL counterpart Dave Smith this week were a thinly veiled swipe at the AFL's handling of the ASADA probe. Smith said rugby league was not "managing to a specific date or specific outcome." Mark the man to revive Bombers But Demetriou said the AFL had "absolutely" asked that ASADA try to reach a conclusion in early August but maintained "that is not a deal, that is called managing expectations and making sure we act as professionally as possible." The anti-doping body was unable to hit the August deadline and the inquiry remains open. Instead, ASADA gave the AFL an interim report on ­August 2, after which the league acted against Essendon and key officials over governance failings. Bombers' walk out threat It has been revealed the AFL may have been unable to use the report as a basis for charges against the Bombers because of privacy laws. Saga ... James Hird and Bruce Reid during the 2013 season. An interim report from ASADA is unprecedented in Australian sport. "We absolutely were asking ASADA to try and get to a ­conclusion by the end of July or early August so that we could have a finals series that everybody in the system and the 18 clubs would know whether it wold be a pure finals series," Demetriou told SEN yesterday. Demetriou again dismissed any inference of a deal with ASADA. "Whether (NRL boss) Dave (Smith) has had a crack at me . . . that's like water off a duck's back, so we'll put that to one side," he said. The first issue that you go to relates to this so-called deal . . . this was that the AFL somehow did a deal with a government agency that is under an act of Parliament to get players off and if we did A, B, C, D that would all happen. (That is) one of the most ridiculous propositions ever put - and if that was the case we should all be put in jail. He said AFL fans had been largely supportive of the way the league had handled the saga. "Our early brand tracking in general shows that people are very, very pleased and very grateful about the manner in which we dealt with this ­matter," Demetriou said.