The anti-doping spectre will stalk Essendon for a third consecutive AFL season, but an upbeat Brent Stanton says it could push the team to new heights.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced on Tuesday it will appeal the not guilty verdicts reached by the AFL's anti-doping tribunal on 34 present and former Essendon players.
It's expected the Court of Arbitration for Sport case won't be finalised before the 2015 season ends.
"I have no doubt," Bombers veteran Stanton said on Thursday, when asked if his team had the resolve to deal with another year of uncertainty.
"This group has grown so much in the last two and a half years.
"It possibly could galvanise this football club back to where it was 10-15 years ago.
"The football staff, the coaching staff and the players are all in this together."
The Bombers were kicked out of the 2013 finals by the league for bringing the game into disrepute over the on-going scandal, while speculation about their fate was a near-constant distraction in 2014.
James Hird was banned from coaching last year as part of the AFL sanctions handed down in 2013.
Stanton suggested there was no resentment toward Hird from the players regarding the club's controversial injections regime.
"A lot of people put their hands up and said they made mistakes and that's part of this process. Nobody is hiding behind that," he said.
"But his football knowledge and the way he bonds with people is a special attribute.
"He's so excited about where this group can go and it infiltrates through the whole team and club.
"James wouldn't be coaching without the support of his playing group, the football club and football staff."
Stanton insisted it had been "business as usual" at training this week, as the side prepare for a crunch clash with North Melbourne.
"We've just got to concentrate on what we can control. That's the way this group has gone about it for the last two and a half years," he said.
That extends to WADA publishing the 34 names involved in the case, a move that left players' union boss Paul Marsh "extremely disappointed".
"It's nothing we can control .. if you get disappointed, you get disappointed," Stanton said.
"It's out there and we can't do much about that now."
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