The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks footy supplements saga was a sports controversy which began in 2011. The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, a professional rugby league club playing in the National Rugby League (NRL). The NRL later offered all five players a one-year ban, backdated to an effective six-month suspension, if they pleaded guilty to taking a banned substance. Sports scientist Stephen Dank provided sworn testimony about what involvement he had at Cronulla and which Staff and coaches were involved.
Dank publicly admitted to overseeing a regimen that involved the administration of two growth hormone-releasing peptides, CJC-1295 and GHRP-6. Dank has never faced criminal charges in relation to dealing in or administering the aforementioned peptides. Both substances are banned by the World Anti-Doping Code, Dank admits both were injected into Cronulla players.
The admission is significant, both for the 12 players who pleaded guilty claiming they had no knowledge of what they were given and for five players who refused the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority’s plea deal and were waiting for their cases to be resolved.
Central figures in the Cronulla saga entered the witness box — head coach and head of the football department Shane Flanagan, head trainer and close friend of Flanagan Mark Noakes, former club doctor David Givney, physiotherapist Konrad Schultz, high-performance manager Trent Elkin and football manager Darren Mooney
The Cronulla players were introduced to Stephen Dank by Shane Flanagan, Mark Noakes and Trent Elkin and told to work with him and trust him. They were given false assurances by Dank, Flanagan and Elkin about the substances they were given and that they were permitted for use in sport.
What records were kept of players being injected? None
Dank told the court that every week he had provided Elkin with a list of all the treatments administered. “I suspect the records were there, like I left at every football club,’’ he said. Elkin said no such records were kept. Dank’s work at Cronulla was loosely managed and undocumented.
When Givney asked for details about what the players were given, he received a vague reply about amino acids and vitamins. Givney raised concern with Shane Flanagan regarding the practices of Dank however he was dismissed and eventually stood back and accepted the practices. The similarity with how Dank operated at Essendon a year later is striking. The process had serious ramifications and adverse effects on the football club as a whole. A number of senior staff were either dismissed or resigned, matches were played at a sub-par standard as players were physically, emotionally and socially affected, and it partially played a role in the club winning the wooden spoon in 2014. [1] Several senior club members, including senior coach Shane Flanagan and trainer Trent Elkin, received penalties and suspensions. Darren Mooney is no longer registered to be involved with the sport.
Senior staff no longer at the club due to the controversy include Damian Irvine (former chairman) who stood down on learning of the malpractice and process failings of Flanagan and his off-field team, Bruno Cullen (former CEO), Darren Mooney (former football manager), Mark Noakes (head trainer) and Trent Elkin (former club trainer), among others. [2]
Shane Flanagan's suspension expired on 31 October 2014, whilst Trent Elkin is not allowed to work at another NRL club as part of his punishment. [3] [4] [5]
In February 2013, the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks were implicated in the Australian Crime Commission (ACC)'s report "Organised Crime and Drugs in Sport". The club conducted its own investigation into allegations of illegal performance-enhancing substance use but also awaited findings from Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA)'s investigation. [6] This came a week after the AFL's Essendon Football Club asked ASADA to investigate concerns over the club's possible use of prohibited supplements during the 2012 AFL season. [7]
In the wake of the report by the ACC, the Sharks then launched an investigation into a brief period of their 2011 season, and afterward claimed that none of its players had illegally taken any performance-enhancing drugs during that season. [8] Shane Flanagan and Darren Mooney made statements to the board of the club that Stephen Dank had no involvement or contact with players during a short period of time in 2011. The board launched an investigation to verify those statements however Flanagan and Mooney retracted them and altered their story 3 days after the investigation was launched. This led to the sacking of Mooney and suspension of Flanagan by the Board and the resignation of Chairman Damian Irvine who was let down by the two men he employed who lied to him.
In March, it was revealed that up to 14 unnamed Sharks players were interviewed by ASADA in relation to the distribution of banned substances during the aforementioned 2011 season. They were offered a voluntary six-month ban if they pleaded guilty to unknowingly being administered with a banned substance as they were told by Stephen Dank that they were being administered "vitamins and amino acids", but if found guilty they would have risked a maximum two-year ban from the sport. [9] [10] Afterwards, just two days before the club's season-opening match against the Gold Coast Titans, head coach Shane Flanagan was suspended indefinitely pending the investigation by ASADA. [11] At the same time, former Brisbane Broncos CEO Bruno Cullen was hired by the club as its interim CEO. [12]
On 17 December 2013, following more than nine months of investigations into the Sharks' supplements program, NRL CEO David Smith announced the following provisional [28] penalties: [21]
Flanagan and Elkin both lodged their appeals to the findings in early 2014, [28] but both were dismissed and their suspensions stood. [29] At the time, no players or other club officials were officially implicated in the findings, [21] however, on 20 August 2014, several players, notably those from the club's 2011 season and five players from the current squad, were issued show cause notices offering them twelve-month bans backdating to 21 November 2013 if they admitted to taking illegal substances during the 2011 season. [22] Without hesitation, most of these players accepted the bans, including captain Paul Gallen; for the former, it ruled him out of the upcoming 2014 Rugby League Four Nations tournament at the end of the season. [24]
The players who were issued the show cause notices by ASADA under the politician Peter Dutton who is Sports Minister, and subsequently banned, were:
It was later announced by the National Rugby League that each of the players implicated in the supplements scandal would be barred from receiving awards at the 2014 Dally M Awards ceremony in September; in addition, captain Paul Gallen was also ruled ineligible for the Brad Fittler Medal for being the best performed New South Wales player during their victorious State of Origin series campaign. [30]
Five players further players alleged to have been involved in the program, but who were not part of the group which admitted guilt and accepted suspensions in 2014, were issued violation notices by the NRL on 8 March 2016. These players were: Colin Best, Paul Aiton, Ben Pomeroy, John Williams and Stuart Flanagan. [26] All five pleaded guilty, and were given twelve month suspensions; but, with backdating caused in part by the delays in prosecuting the case, the suspensions had already expired. [27]
The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks are an Australian professional rugby league club based in Cronulla, in the Sutherland Shire, Southern Sydney, New South Wales. The Cronulla Sharks compete in the National Rugby League (NRL), Australasia's premier rugby league competition. The Sharks, as they are commonly known, were admitted to the New South Wales Rugby League premiership, predecessor of the Australian Rugby League and the current National Rugby League competition, in January 1967. The club competed in every premiership season since then and, during the Super League war, joined the rebel competition before continuing on in the re-united NRL Premiership. The Sharks have been in competition for 56 years, appearing in four grand finals, winning their first premiership in 2016 after defeating the Melbourne Storm at Stadium Australia.
Paul Gallen is an Australian retired professional boxer and former professional rugby league footballer who played as a lock, prop and second-row forward and captained the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in the NRL to their maiden NRL Premiership in 2016.
Ben Pomeroy is an Australian professional rugby league footballer who plays for the Saint-Esteve XIII Catalan in the Elite One Championship. Telegraph poles for arms, he has played for Cambridge Park RLFC in the Penrith district then went on to play in the National Rugby League for Australian clubs, the Penrith Panthers and the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, and in the Super League for the Catalans Dragons and Lézignan Sangliers in the Elite One Championship. His usual position was centre.
Luke Archibald Douglas is a Scotland international former rugby league footballer who played as a prop.
Luke Lewis is an Australian rugby league commentator and former professional rugby league footballer who played for the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks and the Penrith Panthers in the National Rugby League (NRL) and Australia at international level.
The history of the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks rugby League Football Club goes back to its foundation in the 1960s.
Peter Sharp is an Australian professional rugby league coach. He was most recently the interim coach of the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in the National Rugby League.
Stuart Flanagan is a former Hungary international rugby league footballer who last played for the Appin Dogs and previously Cronulla Sharks in the Australian National Rugby League (NRL) competition. He primarily plays at hooker.
Wade Graham is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played as a second-row forward and captained the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in the National Rugby League (NRL). He has played for Australia at international level.
Sandor Earl is a former New Zealand Māori international rugby league footballer who played on the wing for the Sydney Roosters, Penrith Panthers, Canberra Raiders and the Melbourne Storm in the National Rugby League (NRL). He was banned for four years for a doping violation in 2013.
Nathan Gardner, also known by the nickname of "Gards", is an Australian professional rugby league footballer who has played in the 2000s and 2010s. He has played for the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, usually as a fullback, but also as a wing. He previously played for the Parramatta Eels Toyota Cup (Under-20s) team and Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks. He made his National Rugby League (NRL) premiership début in the 2010 season against the Penrith Panthers.
Shane Flanagan is an Australian professional rugby league football coach and commentator, and is the head coach of the St George Illawarra Dragons in the National Rugby League. He was the head coach of the Cronulla Sutherland Sharks and was appointed assistant coach of the Sharks in 2006 and was subsequently appointed to the top position when former coach Ricky Stuart resigned on 20 July 2010. Flanagan was previously the assistant coach at the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles and Coaching Director of the PNG Kumuls. He is the father of Dragons player Kyle Flanagan.
James Shepherd is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer in the National Rugby League in Australia. In 2014, he served briefly as the interim coach of the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks rugby league team following the resignation of Peter Sharp, who was filling in for the suspended Shane Flanagan. Shepherd is currently an Assistant Coach at the St George Illawarra Dragons.
The 2013 NRL season was the 106th season of professional rugby league club competition in Australia. The National Rugby League's main competition, named the 2013 Telstra Premiership after major sponsors Telstra Corporation, was contested by sixteen teams during the regular season, which lasted from March to September, and resulted in the top eight finishing teams, who went on to contest the finals. The season culminated in the Grand Final, in which the Sydney Roosters defeated the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles 26-18 to win their first NRL premiership since 2002.
Stephen Dank is an Australian biochemist who worked as a sports scientist at several professional sports club. He is known for his key role in two major sports drug cheating scandals, the Essendon Football Club supplements saga and the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks supplements saga, where he injected players with illegal substances to improve their performance.
Australia has been at the forefront in the fight against doping in sport. It was one of the first countries to establish a sports anti-doping agency and is a member of World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Australia abides by World Anti-Doping Code. In 2010, Australian John Fahey was re-elected as President of WADA for a second and final three-year term which finished at the end of 2013. Australia like other major countries has been embroiled in major doping in sport controversies and issues.
The Essendon Football Club supplements saga was a sports drug doping controversy that occurred during the early- and mid-2010s. It centred around the Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers, a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne and playing in the Australian Football League (AFL). The club was investigated starting in February 2013 by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) over the legality of its supplements program during the 2012 AFL season and the preceding preseason. After four years of investigations and legal proceedings, thirty-four players at the club were found guilty of having used the banned peptide Thymosin beta-4 and incurred suspensions.
Kyle Flanagan is an Australian professional rugby league footballer who plays as a halfback for the St. George Illawarra Dragons in the National Rugby League (NRL).
The 2019 Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks season was the 53rd in the club's history. The team was coached by John Morris, who replaced Shane Flanagan after he resigned in January. The Cronulla Sharks were captained by Paul Gallen and Wade Graham and competed in the National Rugby League's 2019 Telstra Premiership.
Bronson Xerri is an Australian professional rugby league footballer who currently plays as a centre for the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs in the National Rugby League (NRL).
