Investigation Findings
Friday, 12 October 2007 - Newcastle Knights
Newcastle Knights Chief Executive Officer, Steve Burraston, has completed a review of the clubs Illicit Drugs Policy in the wake of the Andrew Johns revelations, releasing his findings.
An audit of all departments including players, management, past and present Directors, the current Chairman and previous two Chairpersons was conducted.
After the meetings I concluded that some people heard rumours and had suspicions about Andrews activities but had no hard evidence. They took solace in the number of tests he passed throughout his career and felt comfortable knowing that.
Every staff member has been given the opportunity to come forward and voice their concerns or their own personal issues and its a continuing open invitation.
Everyone is clear this is not a witch hunt, it is an effort to help individuals and improve the culture within our club.
Mr Burraston added hes satisfied nothing further could have been done at club level and moving forward will mean gaining an understanding of related issues, including mental illness, wider societal issues and the signs to watch out for.
Everyone in administration and football has a clear understanding the club will assist with any issues, not just drug related, and they are also clear about the clubs aim to extinguish illicit behaviour at all levels, he said.
As part of the investigation, Mr Burraston met with a number of specialist organisations including the Schizophrenia Fellowship, Lifeline, The Christian Life Centre, The Australian Drug Foundation and Good Sports to gain a better understanding of these societal issues and the available support networks.
The advice we received is that prevention and harm minimalisation is the only way forward.
I felt it was important to learn what training programmes are available and those that we can aim not only at parents and partners of our players but all areas of the Knights organisation.
While zero tolerance makes great headlines, we need to be careful and recognise Mental Health is a related issue and needs to be treated with extreme caution.
We also need to recognise that Rugby League is just a section of society and this is a greater community issue.
We hope that the work and systems we implement over the next 12 months will allow us to lead the community in the right direction.
In addition to the prevention campaigns, the Newcastle Knights will continue to implement the new NRL Drug Testing regime which includes more stringent in-house testing.
I would like to point out the NRLs Illicit Drug Testing Policy is one of the toughest in world sport and certainly the most stringent of all Australian football codes, said Mr Burraston.
Were confident with 100 in-house tests a year it will be very difficult for anyone to cheat the system but going forward our aim will be to prevent rather than cure.
What we have learnt through our recent experience is that no one is immune from illicit drugs, not even world champions and we need to do whatever we can to help not only our players, but society in general.
The job now is to survey our stakeholders and audit all areas of our business professionally and with outside help.
We are already better informed but with this information we will be able to lead the way with what we hope to be the best policies, procedures and programmes in the NRL.
