SHARKS captain Paul Gallen, coach Shane Flanagan and besieged sports scientist Stephen Dank could be called before a senate inquiry to answer questions about alleged drug use in sport.
The senate is expected to agree to Victorian Greens Senator Richard Di Natale's plea for an inquiry into the relationship among sports scientists, players and support staff.
The Cronulla Sharks rugby league and Essendon AFL clubs are likely to feature at any inquiry after both were rocked recently by claims about injections given to players.
The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority has singled out the Cronulla Sharks for allegedly administering players with performance-enhancing drugs. Key figures at the club, including Gallen and Flanagan, could provide an insight into the club's overall operation.
Senator Di Natale, a doctor who played ruck-rover for Coburg and Oakleigh in the Victorian Football Association, said he wanted coaches, football operations managers, team doctors, allied health professionals and sport scientists to appear at the inquiry.
The inquiry will investigate AFL and rugby league and while players may be called, they are not the focus of the senate's efforts.
The senate has the power to force witnesses to appear.
"We want to find out what's gone wrong," Senator Di Natale told The Daily Telegraph. "How did it happen and how can we prevent it happening again?
"How is it that individuals in a sporting organisation have been injected with substances that are not fit for human consumption and substances that are not approved by drug regulators or the inappropriate use of prescription drugs?
"Everybody is hard on the athletes as cheats but the clubs and the codes have a responsibility. If you are a 17-year-old kid from the country you are in a difficult position to challenge or question that."
Senator Di Natale queried how, in some cases, club doctors were kept in the dark about injections to players.
The senate inquiry will be held as part of a package for the Greens to support government legislation to give extra powers to ASADA.
But the Greens have watered down some of the proposed powers, now requiring an independent panel to sign off on investigations and rejecting a move to abolish the right to silence of the people it investigates.