Ten years on from the so called “blackest day in Australian sport” and the drugs scandal that crippled the Cronulla Sharks it can be revealed the NRL and ASADA were presented with evidence about some players at another club using the banned peptide CJC-1295.
The Sunday Telegraph has obtained secret text messages between a former Manly player and Darren “The Gazelle” Hibbert and a statutory declaration claiming the supplements salesman helped some Sea Eagles players inject the substance during the club’s 2011 NRL premiership season.
The text messages and the stat dec were passed on to the NRL and Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority in 2016 but
no action was ever taken against the Manly playersimplicated.
The Sharks, on the other hand, were decimated by the scandal.
Few suffered as much as the players — more than a dozen were handed backdated bans even though officials at both the NRL and ASADA conceded they had been duped into taking drugs.
Cronulla players and officials had every right to question their punishment given
Manly escaped unscathed. A senior Cronulla official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Sunday Telegraph the Sharks and their players had been hung out to dry.
“It blurred the process by not making it a fair process with the political pressure that was on,” the former Sharks official said.
“At the time Cronulla were an easy target. Initially there were six clubs named as clubs of interest. Very quickly — I am talking within 72 hours — they thought if Cronulla is one of them, let’s focus on that.
“We were in the second or third year of a full rebuild. It wasn’t only the NRL — it was the other clubs too. They very quickly threw us under the bus to focus it away from them and onto the Sharks.
“It was a very ruthless time. They shut the door and the windows and left us out in the storm. It was really abhorrent when you look back at how it was handled.”
Former Sharks chief executive Bruno Cullen, who was recruited by the NRL to help the club through the crisis, added: “From not being involved at that particular time, but very shortly after (the scandal broke), it was a very traumatic time for the players and obviously it might appear that they have been pretty harshly done by.”
The Daily Telegraph in March 2013 revealed that three Manly players were in “ASADA’s crosshairs for allegedly sourcing CJC-1295 away from the club’s headquarters and without its consent or knowledge”.
At the time ASADA told the Sea Eagles there was evidence to suggest three of its players faced bans of up to two years.
An SMS exchange between Hibbert and one player in which they discussed use of the prohibited substance to treat an injury supports ASADA’s interest in the Manly players.
“Leg isn’t much different,” the player texted.
“See how it is tomorrow,” Hibbert replies.
“Sometimes takes to 1 to 3 shots, plus the injury is old, so may also be scar tissue that has formed, which [it]cj cannot fix …”
However, the investigation into Manly appeared to quickly fizzle out with the club revealing at the time they did not receive requests from ASADA to interview their players.
Manly was one of six NRL clubs under investigation by ASADA over their supplements program and procedures but only Cronulla paid a heavy price.
Sharks coach Shane Flanagan received a 12-month ban, the club was fined $1 million, club trainer Trent Elkin was deregistered and 14 players received 12 month bans at the time.
Hibbert provided The Sunday Telegraph with a statutory declaration in 2016 confirming that he assisted multiple Manly players self-administer the peptide in 2010 and 2011 in a bid to expose the hypocrisy of ASADA’s pursuit of the Cronulla players over the use of a substance he believed should never have been placed on the prohibited substances list and was safe to use.
The drugs scandal involving
sports scientist Stephen Dank was instead limited to rival NRL club Cronulla and Essendon in the AFL.
But Manly and three other AFL clubs — Gold Coast, Melbourne and Geelong — all had dealings or associations with Dank in the years before the so-called “blackest day” press conference in Canberra in February 2013 — 10 years ago this week.
The Sunday Telegraph provided Hibbert’s statutory declarations to the NRL integrity unit and ASADA at the time.
CJC-1295 was one of the substances that led to Cronulla players being suspended over its use in 2011.
Hibbert said the club and Manly doctor were not aware of the CJC- 1295 injections, which were conducted privately, usually at Hibbert’s home in Sydney’s northwest.
He said most of the jabs were self-administered by the players with vials of CJC-1295 kept in Hibbert’s fridge.
The CJC-1295 was initially sourced at a clinic in Castle Hill and later at a clinic run by Dank.
“Most of the time I stored it at my house, just to be on the safe side,” Hibbert said.
“They didn’t want any of their family knowing or anything like that.”
Hibbert said the players paid for the CJC-1295 out of their own pocket.
The substance was usually injected directly into a player’s injured muscle or ligament and helped with a speedy recovery, he said.
“They would do it themselves — I would supervise where they actually do it,” Hibbert said.
“They wanted to learn how to do it, so they wouldn’t have to rely on me the whole time.”
When the injections were taking place, Hibbert said he believed that CJC-1295 was permitted for use by athletes.
“The main thing it was used for was to get them over their injury quicker,” he said.
“Nothing was ever discussed about whether it was performance enhancing or not. We believed it wasn’t.”
Dank worked as Manly’s sports scientist until the end of the 2010 season.
He confirmed in 2016 that he had arranged CJC-1295 injections at a Sydney clinic for some Manly players in 2010.
“We sent them there … Castle Hill,” Dank said.
Manly defeated the New Zealand Warriors in the 2011 NRL grand final 24-10.
Hibbert was linked to Manly from 2004 to 2011 as a supplements sales rep and became embroiled in the Cronulla scandal when he injected Sharks players with peptides, including CJC-1295.
In 2016, Dank confirmed he had also supplied Gold Coast Suns defender Nathan Bock with CJC-1295.
He told The Sunday Telegraph he bought the substance at a Sydney compounding pharmacy in December 2010 and took it to the Gold Coast on a plane in a cooler bag packed with dry ice.
He said he gave the CJC-1295 to then Suns fitness boss Dean Robinson, who taught Bock how to self-administer it.
Bock told ASADA in 2013 that he injected himself with a substance given to him by Robinson between December 16, 2010 and January27, 2011 but he was never issued with a show-cause notice.
Hibbert could not be contacted.
