Experienced football administrator, Bruno Cullen, speaks publicly for the first time about how he found the club in disarray and players let down by the club's management.
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Tonight shark alert: bad management threatens to bring down the Cronulla rugby league club.
Tonight we go behind the wall of silence and secrecy surrounding the Cronulla sharks NRL supplements scandal.
Six months ago, it emerged that Australia's anti-doping authority was investigating the use of supplements by the club in 2011.
Tonight, in his first television interview, the club's former chief executive Bruno Cullen reveals what he knows about the supplements regime and how the club was run at the time.
The respected sporting administrator claims there was an alarming lack of governance before his arrival at the Sharks and he believes the players have been let down.
Caro Meldrum-Hanna has this exclusive report.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA, REPORTER: It's Sunday, 20 March 2011. At Shark Park training has just wrapped up. The first 17 playing group is led into the middle of the field and asked to sit down.
Coach Shane Flanagan and trainer Trent Elkin have something to tell them.
A new supplements regime run by biochemist Steve Dank is under way.
They're told it's all been checked and everything's above board, most importantly it has to remain a secret.
And for two years it does.
NRL COMMENTATOR: Thoroughly deserved victory by the home side.
EXERP FROM NEWS REPORT: There's an air of crisis at the Cronulla Sharks. The club has gone into damage control over doping allegations.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: In March 2013 Cronulla's secret supplements regime exploded in public scandal.
EXERP FROM NEWS REPORT: As many as 14 players from the 2011 playing roster are under investigation.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The scalps came thick and fast. The board was overthrown and the chairman was rolled.
KEITH WARD, SHARKS DEPUTY CHAIRMAN: Cronulla Sharks head coach, Mr Shane Flanagan, has been stood down pending the outcome of the full management review.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Four key staffers were sacked.
TRISH KAVANAGAH, BARRISTER: I do not believe the board knew of the difficulties at that time until I drew it to their attention.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The NRL called on former Brisbane Broncos CEO Bruno Cullen to come in and clean up the mess. A respected football administrator and a managing director with 20 years experience, tonight he speaks publicly for the first time about how he found a club in disarray.
BRUNO CULLEN, FORMER SHARKS CEO: The organisational structure of the Cronulla Sharks footy club was like a footy club of 20 years ago. For a number of reasons it was an invitation for things to happen, it was a disaster waiting to happen and all those things have eventuated.
EXERP FROM NEWS REPORT: Cronulla has offered a public apology to four staff members who were sacked in the early days of the sports ElephantJuice investigation.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: After just five months in the job, Bruno Cullen walked away from the Sharks disgusted by the new board's decision three weeks ago to begin reinstating the four sacked staffers blamed for allowing the supplements regime to take hold in 2011.
BRUNO CULLEN: I'd accepted all these things as things that had gone pear shaped but that we'd fixed them or in the process of fixing them. Where my termination came was with the reinstatement issue and, um the way that the board handled that with regard to, I guess, what I saw as my exclusion and the rejection of my advice in that regard.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: What was your advice?
BRUNO CULLEN: My firm advice was that they shouldn't do anything at all with regard to the reinstatement of the staff until such time as the ASADA investigation had been completed.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: With ASADA's interim report into the supplements regime run by Steve Dank at Essendon Football Club now complete, the regulator has turned its attention back to the Sharks and specifically to period of time Steve Dank was at the club.
Pictured here inside the Sharks' dressing rooms, ASADA's first attempt at interviewing Cronulla players three months ago didn't go well.
The regulator abandoned its plans after one failed interview with Cronulla player Wade Graham, who showed up wearing thongs and a T shirt and reportedly declined to answer questions.
When you came on board how would you characterise or describe the resistance or level of cooperation with ASADA by the players?
Were they willing to tell all and cooperate?
BRUNO CULLEN: No, the legal advice wasn't to not tell. They decided generally as a group that they should just button up and see where that took them. They were angry and I don't even know if they knew who they were angry at. I don't know if they were angry with Dank or Elkin or the other staff members or who they were angry at, angry at themselves. There are players who might have said this is getting to me, this is too much. I'd really like to let everybody know at least my role in what it was so I don't get effected long term. But again that group mentality, I guess, took over or prevailed and so the group subsequent to those times stayed rock solid as a group.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Two weeks ago ASADA recommenced its interviews with Cronulla players. Bolstered with new powers to get players to answer questions.
What would you advise players now the second round of ASADA interviews are running?
BRUNO CULLEN: Get them over and done with as quickly as possible, be as honest as you can but that doesn't mean they've got to throw out their rights either.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Steve Dank maintains he never gave any players prohibited substances, but 7:30 has obtained this internal Sharks report completed in March by Dr Trish Kavanagh, formerly of ASADA. It has never before been publicly released. It shows that during Steve Dank's 5 month tenure with the Sharks in 2011, players were injected with peptides GHRP-6 and CJC-1295 four times before being administered cream versions. Importantly, the Kavanagh report states that under ASADA both peptides were prohibited substances at all times from one January 2011.
BRUNO CULLEN: Those people including Steve Dank and others at the club that were around the players at the time had a real responsibility for the player welfare and I don't believe that the focus was anywhere near what it should have been.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Do you think they should have investigated where these ElephantJuice came from, who was making them?
BRUNO CULLEN: The club and we've got to pull back from I guess what the club is, and the club which includes the old board and I guess the executive team around the operations at the time excluding the CEO, were unaware what was going on. So those sorts of questions were never asked. We were never asked by those people.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: If more questions had been asked, the club would have discovered another problem early on. 7:30 can reveal the identity of the compounding pharmacist Steve Dank used at the time he was at the Sharks. Maged Sedrak is a pharmacist based here in the Shark's home suburb, Cronulla.
Hi, Maged. My name is Caro Meldrum Hanna, I've been trying to speak with you. I'm from the ABC 7:30 Report. I'd like to ask you some questions about Steve Dank and the peptides you made for him (closes door).
7:30 has discovered that in 2007, Sedrak was found guilty of professional misconduct by the Pharmacy Board of NSW for multiple drug dispensing errors involving children. Citing a lack of skill and judgement and the need to protect the public, the Pharmacy Board ordered Sedrak to comply with strict auditing and inspection rules. 7:30 has found he was disciplined again this year, with the Ministry of Health prohibiting him from possessing, supplying or manufacturing ElephantJuice of addiction and withdrawing his drug authority in February.
When 7:30 approached pharmacist Maged Sedrak he told us that ASADA has contacted him twice, seeking to interview him about his role in Cronulla's supplements regime. He told us he'd rather forget his time with Steve Dank in 2011 and declined to answer any further questions.
Meanwhile, Steve Dank has told 7:30 that he stopped using Maged Sedrak's services after he received a bad batch of peptides from the pharmacist. Another question that remains unanswered is who paid for Steve Dank's services at the Sharks. When Bruno Cullen tried to find out he says he came to a dead-end.
BRUNO CULLEN: It appears from most of the records we've got that Dank was certainly not on the payroll of the club and as you mentioned before, he was first engaged with the club around GPS systems and datas and so, but I was unaware of any direct payment to Steve Dank for whatever he did for the club.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Does that strike you as unusual for a club in the year 2011 with a biochemist around and very exotic and expensive supplements for there to be no record of anything?
BRUNO CULLEN: Well again, as I said, the whole thing was pretty chaotic, so there's no records of anything.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The secrets at Cronulla don't end there. 7:30 has discovered a bank account running outside of the club's books by coach Shane Flanagan listed here in these internal Sharks emails dated February 2013.
HPU stands for the high performance unit account and 7:30 understands it was operating outside of the board's control after being ordered to shut down. Coach Flanagan told 7:30 today the account was used to pay for Cronulla's new gym.
It was kept from the prying eyes of management and former CEO Bruno Cullen.
You never became aware of this account?
BRUNO CULLEN: Not that particular account, no, nup. The club didn't even bank with Westpac, I don't think. No, they banked with St George.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Would that concern you if there was an account called the high performance unit account operating outside of the club and off the books?
BRUNO CULLEN: Definitely.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Why?
BRUNO CULLEN: It's just not, you don't do things that way. Every dollar that comes into the club and therefore every dollar that goes out of the club should be going through the club's central account and be recorded and accounted for.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The heat on Cronulla increased earlier this month when Customs officials confiscated captain Paul Gallen's mobile phone and Ipad.
It's the most public display yet, that Paul Gallen is being targeted by ASADA. Privately captain Gallen has been embroiled in a different saga.
7:30 has obtained a series of emails that expose another deal being done in private at the Sharks. They're written by this man, Sami Chamoun, former Cronulla sponsor and director of security company EGroup. On the 5th of February 2013, just days before the Sharks' secret supplements regime become public, Chamoun wrote to the Cronulla board complaining about his contract being terminated early, threatening to blow the lid on a secret salary cap deal.
EMAIL FROM CHAMOUN TO CRONULLA BOARD: "I've been paying a certain player cash off the salary cap for the past three years, you think that's not going to get out into the media if it goes into legal case? It's the truth; you and your management have a lot to answer"
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Half an hour later, a furious coach Shane Flanagan wrote to the board seeking help, revealing the identity of the player and the club's breach of the salary cap rules.
The player was NSW's favourite son, Blues captain and Cronulla chief Paul Gallen.
STATEMENT: Tonight, Paul Gallen has been contacted and informed by Sami of EGroup and give (sic) his account of contract details with our club and full details of payments to Paul over many years which will expose us salary cap and Paul possibly taxation wise. Everyone needs to be aware that if Paul is exposed to any form of inspection or scrutiny, due to EGroup contract details the club arranged all details of past contracts, not Paul.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: 7:30 understands it was not Paul Gallen but the club that was in breach. It's believed payments made to a number of players run up to $250,000 and were never properly registered as third party player agreements by the club.
BRUNO CULLEN: I know cash sounds terrible um, and that's something, um, I, won't go there with that, but the arrangement was for him to make a payment to Paul, do the sponsorship and make the third party payment. Now whether he paid that by, I don't want to be flippant about it, but if he paid that by cash, cheque, jars of vegemite, whatever, um, he made the payment. The problem is more the documentation. From a salary cap point of view it wasn't formalised the way it should have been.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: For Bruno Cullen, the future survival of the Cronulla Sharks rests on the club righting the wrongs of the past and ensuring that they don't make the same mistakes again.
BRUNO CULLEN: I'm not too sure whether they've learnt their lesson or not. Worst case scenario, I fear for them and worst case scenario is a whole lot of things around you know, player suspension, players suing the club for loss of income because of suspension, players suing the club because of lack of um, welfare. Worst case scenario they would have some huge challenges.
LEIGH SALES: Caro Meldrum-Hanna reporting.
