Agree with a lot of what you're saying, particularly around the loophole of drink and coke - they go hand in hand, how on earth behind drunk could be in any way seem as mitigation is ridiculous.

On the Cas culture front, that's all well and good in principle of the rest of the club/players are clean skins, but doesn't work in reality if plenty of them are at it on a weekend too....

My personal opinion is that the best chance Zak has to get back on track is to sign for a club like Wigan. He needs to get away from his clown 'mates'. If Wigan do sign him and they insist that he moves over there then I think he may have a chance of staying reasonably incident free. If he stays around Ponte area he's an accident waiting to happen again.

That's nonsense, sorry. On a good day Wigan is an hour away. Not far enough if the bright lights are too much of a distraction for him. When he left Leeds it was felt his move would resolve his issues, only for them to reappear. When someone is a thick as Hardaker is, trouble will inevitably follow them around.

If Hardaker's ban is anything to go by, I expect Thomas Minns to get a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again.

"Why would they sack him?"

1. Morals/integrity.
2. To set the record for the rest of the team.
3. To make an example to their young fans.
4. Under pressure from their sponsors.
5. To avoid paying his wages for 14 months whilst he is ineligible to play.
6. After 14 months out he is likely to return a shadow of his former self (remember he'd been rubbish the seasons before he joined Cas).
7. Because he let the team down at the absolute biggest moment.

My take on this is that this is one of those bizarre moments when you just wish the sport was a properly run professional game so you could get the truth about things and not the nonsensical PR spin that will inevitably come out.

There are so, so many issues with this and precisely none of them will ever be resolved by any of the parties involved, just ignored. The time it took to announce his ban is too long, the time it took to charge him was too long, it was 20 days after his failed test that he played against St Helens in the semi final. The public statements released are nonsense, there were no 'exceptional circumstances' just like there weren't when the last five or six players to be caught got lenient bans either. Anyone who got a 2 year ban should be contacting their solicitors about now to make a compensation claim.

But for me the biggest, most glaring anomaly in this is that Wigan clearly knew when his ban would expire months before it was announced. They have been shuffling their cards for a couple of months now to accomodate him in their squad and have not only agreed a deal with Hardaker but also moved on or attempted to move on other players. Now how could they do that so confidently when the ban was still up in the air? Clearly they had inside knowledge of not only the process but the outcome before it was even decided. Rugby League is a professional sport and wherever money goes so does greed and corruption. This whole situation reeks and again Cas are royally shafted.

The competition itself is stronger for him returning though, it adds one more quality player to the handful we already have in Super League. Huge risk for Wigan, especially if they release Tomkins rather than move him or Hardaker to another position.

Moving a few miles doesn’t solve mental health issues, which is why Hardaker can’t make rational decisions. He’ll make the same irrational decisions.

So if someone constantly gets into trouble, its automatically "Mental Health Issues"? What happened to just being a prat who never learns?

That’s the strange thing for me. The panel did not accept that his personals issues meant the ban should be shorter than normal, but then decided that it should be shorter because he was battered at the time.
At point 42 they even write that it was fortuitous that he chose to take cocaine rather than drink more alcohol. Very, very strange given than one is a banned substance and the other isn’t! It’s so strange that I wonder if they mean the opposite, as in the next sentence they say that if he had drunk more alcohol he wouldn’t have been before the panel.

Have UKAD and the RFL set a Precedent here by introducing a mitigating factor, drinking 6 pints of lager and sharing bottles of Whiskey/Vodka with your mates before snorting cocaine is OK to reduce the ban from 2 years to 14 months.

Read the judgement. It’s clear he’s been diagnosed with mental health issues years ago. It’s not like he’s suddenly developed them now he faces a drugs ban.

Yep, tough it’s nothing to do with the RFL.
UKAD have decided that being intoxicated means a shorter ban.