Dark Knight: star on drug charges
BRAD WALTER
December 17, 2009
TIMING is everything. As the Newcastle Knights prepared to announce Coke as a new sponsor yesterday, it emerged one of their players had been arrested by police, who said he was a kingpin in a drugs distribution network supplying ''coke'' - among other substances - on the North Coast.
The Newcastle Local Court was told yesterday police would submit evidence Danny Wicks had been supplying drugs to other Newcastle players.
The arrest of the Knights cult figure after a series of dawn raids is the biggest drugs scandal to hit the code since former Newtown halfback Paul Hayward was caught with a suitcase of heroin at a Bangkok hotel in 1978.
The six charges of supplying a prohibited substance and two of possession against Wicks are just the latest in a long list of off-field scandals that have hit the NRL in the past 12 months.
The year began with Manly and Australian fullback Brett Stewart - the player anointed as the public face of the game - accused of sexual assault just two days after launching the season.
Melbourne Storm star Greg Inglis, who became the focus of the NRL's $1.5 million television advertisement campaign after Stewart was edited out, also has a court case pending over charges of unlawfully assaulting and recklessly causing injury to his former girlfriend Sally Robinson in August. Stewart and Inglis have both indicated they will plead not guilty and Wicks's lawyer, Mark Hanlon, said the 24-year-old prop intended to do the same.
Wicks remained in custody last night after being unable to raise the $50,000 bail.
His 22-year-old brother, Brett Wicks, and sister-in-law, Tristen Davenport, were also arrested and each charged with five counts of supplying drugs, along with another man, Steven Stefanouski, who was charged with one count of supply.
Police prosecutor Jillian Kelton said the amount of drugs involved was ''twice the trafficable quantity'', and that the supply occurred over a matter of months.
''We are talking about hundreds of kilos that have been supplied over time by this offender,'' Ms Kelton said.
The incident comes just two years after Newcastle's greatest player, Andrew Johns, confessed to having taken drugs all his career, prompting one shocked official to say: ''I thought we had got rid of the party culture.''
But despite the player welfare programs put in place by the NRL and the clubs, one established first-grader yesterday told the Herald drug use was rife in rugby league circles. The player said the use of recreational drugs such as ecstasy and cocaine was common during the off-season.
''Everyone knows people do it,'' said the source, who insisted he had never tried the drugs.
