Not once, not even in what should have been a reflective moment in the dock after sentence was passed, have Manchester United or Rio Ferdinand displayed anything but arrogance and contempt for their accusers.
Far from hanging their heads in shame, not once did either acknowledge that, under the rules, Ferdinand pronounced himself guilty from the moment he drove away from UK Sport drugs testers and that a hearing was necessary only to rubber stamp that guilt and determine the length of an automatic ban.
Manchester United have displayed, in turn, petulance, apoplexy and, right up to the hearing and beyond, breathtaking arrogance over a charge as serious as any that any sportsman can face. And one in which the whole world already knew Ferdinand was guilty because failing to take a test is an offence in itself.
For all we know, though there is no previous form to suggest it, he could have swallowed a cocktail of drugs on the night before the testers turned up at the gates of Carrington. And if that sounds inequitable, remember it was Ferdinand who denied himself the chance to prove his subsequent claim that he opens the bowling for the anti-drugs side by being too pre-occupied with his shopping trip to think of taking the test.
United's reaction, which one might have expected to contain a grain of humility, seemed to lack even concern, calling up battalions of lawyers and legal experts in the conceited belief that they could bamboozle a simple Football Association councillor like Barry Bright. They even tried to blame the testing team for inefficiency, which was brazen beyond belief.
Sir Alex Ferguson was reported to have breezed in and out of the hearing as if, like Ferdinand on the day of the test that never was, it was a gross intrusion into his busy schedule. And his first reaction afterwards was one of open defiance, confirming that Ferdinand would play against Tottenham today.