http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spo...s/news-story/c1ef2b2a337b3f111beb20d9f18f8edd
Doping case finally over for former Cronulla players
The NRL has secretly resolved its doping cases against the forgotten Cronulla five — the former Sharks players who refused to accept a plea deal and token suspension offered two years ago by the league and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.
The Australian can reveal that all five players have now pleaded guilty to taking a banned peptide during the club’s disastrous flirtation with sports scientist Stephen Dank in the early weeks of the 2011 season.
The end of the Cronulla saga, secured behind closed doors prior to the club’s historic premiership, leaves an outstanding appeal by current and former Essendon footballers against their two-year bans as the only unfinished anti-doping business from the drug scandal.
The NRL earlier this year offered all five players a one-year ban, backdated to an effective six-month suspension, if they pleaded guilty to taking a banned substance.
Three of the hold-out players, Colin Best, Ben Pomeroy and John Williams, accepted the ASADA-approved deal. Best and Williams are retired from the game while Pomeroy plays club football in the French Pyrenees.
Two players, Paul Aiton and Stuart Flanagan, accepted they were injected with a banned peptide at Cronulla but refused to accept the sanction on offer. Instead, they took their case to an NRL anti-doping tribunal hearing and argued for the same penalty imposed on the dozen current and former Sharks players who took the NRL’s original deal in August, 2014.
In July, the NRL tribunal found in favour of the players. Both players were given the same deal as Cronulla captain Paul Gallen and his 11 current and former teammates — a one-year ban, backdated by nine months due to the NRL and ASADA’s unreasonable delay in prosecuting the case.
The World Anti-Doping Agency has accepted the penalties.
At AFL club Essendon, 34 current and former players are appealing their bans before the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland.
The court has received all submissions and is expected to hand down a decision this year.
The appeal is based on a technical argument about jurisdiction; namely, whether the Court of Arbitration for Sport acted unlawfully by allowing WADA to present for a second time the case against the Essendon players after they were earlier cleared by an AFL anti-doping tribunal.
When CAS reheard the case, it found that all 34 players were injected with a banned peptide, Thymosin Beta-4, during the 2012 season and banned them each for two full seasons, backdated to November 2014.
If the appeal is successful, the CAS decision will be rendered null and void and no doping conviction will be recorded against the players. If the appeal fails, the AFL will confront the vexed issue of whether to strip Essendon captain Jobe Watson of the Brownlow Medal he won in the same season that Dank worked at the club.
Essendon and Cronulla players have also brought compensation claims against their clubs for failing in their duty of care, with some Essendon players already reaching in-principle settlement.
The penalties offered to the five Cronulla players are consistent with the NRL and ASADA’s view that the Sharks footballers were duped and doped — that they were injected with banned peptides after being given false assurances by Dank and club officials that the substances were permitted.
ASADA, WADA and CAS took a different view towards the Essendon players, despite evidence they were also lied to about what they were injected with.
Where the bans imposed on the Cronulla players were halved under a “no significant fault or negligence’’ provision within the World Anti-Doping Code, the Essendon players were given the full, mandatory penalty reserved for deliberate drug cheats.
The Cronulla bans were heavily backdated so that most players who took the original offer missed only a handful of games. The Essendon players still playing for the Bombers or other clubs or working as coaches have missed the entire 2016 season. Their bans expire next month.
The evidence against the Cronulla players was bolstered earlier this year when Dank testified under oath in the NSW Supreme Court to approving the use of two growth-hormone releasing peptides, CJC-1295 and GHRP-6, to the Sharks playing group. Both substances are banned in sport.
Dank denies injecting any Essendon player with Thymosin Beta-4. He is appealing his lifetime ban imposed by the AFL tribunal to an AFL appeals board. The appeal is set down for November 21.
