Is this The End, my only friend, The End? Unfortunately, Jim Morrison, wherever you are up there as you play cards with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, it is not. They have just served the garlic bread, and the main course is yet to come.

There might be some finality for the players, but the mere fact they are being offered six-month suspensions for alleged peptide use in 2011 suggests there are bigger fish up the food chain who ASADA is trying to hook.

Revelations from Fairfax Media colleague Roy Masters on Monday that past and present Cronulla players will be offered a range of sanctions, the most likely scenario of six months, which will effectively be just a month of game time, will be seen by many as the light at the end of a long, complicated, political, lawyered, migraine-inducing tunnel.

The first reaction is: how bloody convenient.

NRL chief executive Dave Smith said last week there were no “new developments” in the Sharks investigation. There has been no movement at the ASADA station. Now, suddenly, with the Sharks' Mad Monday celebrations only a handful of weeks away, the investigation has sprung to life.

If players take six months, they will miss a handful of matches of next season. Presumably, though, those smattering of players who allegedly consulted with Stephen Dank and his associate Darren Hibbert (aka “The Gazelle” and “The Mechanic”, because he wore overalls when he met them) face harsher penalties. But the damage to the playing ranks, as many had feared, will be minimal, and the pain and embarrassment inflicted on the greatest game of all will be as painless as possible.

It all seems grossly manufactured. Much like the AFL’s handling of Essendon, as three days of testimony in the Federal Court last week spectacularly illuminated.

So, tell me Lizard King, is this The End? Is it? Does Jimi know? I suspect Janis has already passed out.

You suspect it is not The End.

The reason is the World Anti-Doping Agency code, and the basis on which players can be offered discounts on the minimum penalty of two years.

For those of you playing at home, you need to know there are three levels of discounts.

First, if it is decided an athlete is at “no fault or negligence” and has displayed "utmost caution", the athlete can essentially receive a slap on the wrist.

A clear example of this is French tennis player Richard Gasquet, who in 2009 was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Court of Arbitration for Sport over a positive test for cocaine. He claimed he inadvertently consumed the illicit substance by kissing a woman in a Miami club hours after withdrawing injured from a tournament. (WADA and the International Tennis Federation were disgusted by the CAS finding).

Second, if it is decided there is “no significant fault or negligence” at play, the athlete can receive a discount of up to 50 per cent.

The third discount falls under the term “substantial assistance”, and it is this possible scenario that has prompted some observers of the Cronulla investigation to believe ASADA and new chief executive Ben McDevitt want larger scalps than naive players who have taken peptides.

Substantial assistance means an admission of guilt, which will fly in the face of what every Sharks player has said since the February 7 news conference last year: that they have done nothing wrong.

Substantial assistance – up to a 75 per cent discount, so essentially six months – was offered to Sharks players on March 4 last year in negotiations involving the club, NRL and ASADA.

The players knocked it back after it came to light that Essendon players were reportedly to be offered the same slap on the wrist that Gasquet received.

What is so often forgotten in this debate is that substantial assistance must be exactly that: it must lead to the prosecution of someone else.

If Sharks players are prepared to admit guilt and cop the six months, they will need to point the finger at those above them. The big fish, in other words.

Former Cronulla strength and conditioning coach Trent Elkin said earlier this month that coach Shane Flanagan had been aware of all the practices implemented by sports scientist Stephen Dank in 2011.

Flanagan has said all along he had done nothing wrong. He calmly answered questions put to him before that story went to print, but one response stands out. "I don’t blame Trent Elkin," Flanagan said. "I blame the system. No CEO at the club. I blame Dank. I still trust Trent Elkin and his integrity and that he would ever knowingly do something wrong by those players. I think the players believe that as well.’’

Chairman Damian Keogh and his ticket took control of the Sharks last year on the promise that Flanagan and his coaching staff would be reinstated. Flanagan will walk back into Remondis Stadium next month, having served his suspension handed down by the NRL, and then launch into a new three-year deal.

Regardless of what happens on Wednesday, can Cronulla truly move on with Flanagan again the dominant character at a club desperate for The End but with so much further to go?