Groves and fellow Olympians Thomas Fraser-Holmes and Jarrod Poort have all been served with breach notices for missing three scheduled out-of-competition tests in a 12-month period. The maximum penalty carries a two-year ban.

Fraser-Holmes missed the allocated one-hour window while having a dinner at his mother's house on the Gold Coast. He said he arrived home just minutes after the testers had departed and was duly issued with a third strike a few weeks later.

Groves maintains she was at the scheduled place at the correct time but testers failed to locate her at her college dormitory. While FINA said agents had called Groves, the Queenslander said there were no missed calls on her phone, nor any knocks on her door after testers encountered an unmanned front desk in the building.

Tim Fuller has been engaged by Groves and Fraser-Holmes. Poort is not being represented by Fuller and could not be reached for comment.

Fuller said the attempt to locate Groves, in particular, fell well short of guidelines and he was seeking to have it quashed before it went to an independent hearing.

And he will put all of the previous strikes of both swimmers under the microscope, with any procedural slip-up from FINA agents enough to have a missed test dismissed and allow the athletes to continue their careers as normal.

Fuller said both swimmers were tested soon after their missed appointments and both returned clean samples, as they had done repeatedly throughout their careers. He said this was a technical issue, not a doping issue, which also allowed them the possibility of a reduced one-year ban should appeals fail.

"FINA say that the testing authority must take all reasonable tests. We're going to hotly contest that. We're confident we can prove the testing authority were not compliant with WADA's international testing procedures," Fuller said.

"Maddie could proceed to a hearing but we're in correspondence with FINA around her matter. She was astounded. We're quite hopeful they will rule out the breach before going to a hearing.

"If it doesn't, we're confident it will be dismissed at a hearing. We don't believe they have, at least in Maddie's case, made good enough efforts to get hold of her.

"They called her coach in Australia and there's no missed calls on her phone. They alleged they called the number. I can get hold of her every time. She was in the location she said she would be at. Maddie's case is very strong."

There is precedent when it comes to missing tests scheduled using WADA's Whereabouts phone app, the same one used by the Australian swimming trio.

British cyclist Lizzie Armitstead successfully argued that one of her missed tests was the fault of the testers, not hers, and was given the green light to compete at the Rio Olympic Games. She would go on to finish fifth in the road race.

Fuller said he would leave no stone unturned in fighting the charges and investigations had cast doubt over the first two of Fraser-Holmes' missed tests, even if the third presented a more difficult case.

"We'll challenge the basis of all of the three tests to make sure the protocol around them was correct. FINA engage a contract with agents to go and conduct these tests. There is always going to be an occasion where someone doesn't comply with the testing procedure.

"But from what we've learned from the third Whereabouts test, we've cast some doubt about the first two. So we will examine all three.

"We are going to appeal any of those breaches. If one of those allegations can be dismissed, the athlete then sits on two. There is precedent, right through to the Court of Arbitration for sport, where allegations like these have been dismissed on technicalities.

"Even on the third one alone, we are confident we can have them overturned."