THE Channel Seven feud with the AFL and its players has been another ugly chapter in a long football season. The players on paper won the dispute yesterday but they, too, have lost something in a sense — both their privacy and their reputations in a week when illegal drugs have haunted football across the country.

The dispute should never have lasted this long. Twelve days have passed since the expose regarding a Melbourne-based club, positive drug tests and private medical records, all of which can never be published or broadcast.

Channel Seven chief executive David Leckie made the right decision in forcing his news department and therefore his network to regret publicly what it had done in paying for dubiously obtained medical documents and broadcasting them as well as pulling out of yet more court action against the AFL.

But Leckie made his decision a week too late.

Clearly the situation had moved out of hand when footballers were threatening to boycott the Brownlow and Brendan Fevola, of all people, was claiming media persecution regarding his behaviour in Ireland last year. But the players took a stand and won despite the fact that even some coaches were becoming tired of the boycott — namely Paul Roos, who yesterday declared enough was enough.

Dylan Howard, the journalist at the centre of it all who could still face police charges, became a loose cannon doing neither his cause nor his network no good at all by repeatedly granting interviews and becoming more pious regarding his cause celebre. Howard was eventually sacked by 3AW for revealing more supposedly private information, which was deemed incorrect and inappropriate by the station, and he has been strongly cautioned by his own network regarding contractual requirements.

But, of course, Howard's handling of the story was only the end result of an increasingly intense media atmosphere that pervades the AFL. He did not dig up the story himself. He was instructed to do it.

He either ignored or did not get enough guidance following the story, and hopefully chequebook journalism as a result has been tainted from both sides of the fence, while some private areas of players lives must clearly be considered sacrosanct.

Seven capitulated yesterday because Howard was becoming increasingly discredited, ratings were naturally a concern and the players were sticking to their guns.

No follow-up drug scandal in the competition has emerged to justify the network's fight to end the suppression order. Support from News Limited followed by the Andrew Johns revelation kept their cause alive for a few days but now, with the finals upon us, the drugs story seems to have died.

The AFL will be praying that there will be no resurrection, at least not for the rest of September.