The relationship between politics and hyperbole is uncannily analogous to the one between chips and salt. Neither is much without the other.

But whether it be the recession "we had to have" or the "debt and deficit disaster" about to consume us, imagery employed to make a point can quickly backfire if it is not supported by at least some facts, or worse, turns out to be plain wrong.

So when the then justice minister Jason Clare, the sports minister Kate Lundy, the heads of the Australian Crime Commission, and the major sporting codes got together in a high-profile press conference February 2013 to pronounce "the blackest day in Australian sport", they certainly got peoples' attention.

Anyone listening to or reading the coverage of the Australian Crime Commission report, was rightly shocked to learn of the extent of doping in AFL and NRL and beyond, as well as the pervasive influence in these much loved sports of organised crime figures.

Match fixing, performance enhancing drugs, and who knows what other nefarious activities, were rife in these trusted cultural touchstones. Coaches, staff, and senior players revered as social heroes were as dodgy as all get out it seemed. Nothing could be taken for granted in a pernicious culture of underworld criminality and outright cheating condoning the distribution of banned drugs in exchange for large quantities of cash and perhaps other illicit activities.

More than two years later however, and it has all come to naught.

The blackest day for Australian sport turned out to be a black-eye for politicians and for hyperventilating police and intelligence services.

The judicial ruling to dismiss the charges of systematic doping at the Essendon Football Club after a prolonged legal argument, has left elite-level sport with a bad aftertaste and authorities looking like dills.

ASADA, the anti-doping agency, apparently muffed the evidentiary trail, failing to get some statements properly verified.

An election since 2013 has washed away the Labor government that was in charge in Canberra at the time, taking some of the political sting out of the embarrassment, but the lesson for authorities is clear.

If you're going to make incendiary allegations of criminality and moral decay, get the evidence together first.

Regrettably, all that this episode seems to have achieved is the further erosion of public confidence in politics, in sport, and in police, all at the same time.

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