Sandor Earl: I’ll challenge the way NRL set me up
2 hours ago May 18, 2014 12:00AM
NRL star Sandor Earl is preparing to challenge his drugs ban, accusing ASADA of using illegally intercepted text messages as evidence and the NRL of bullying him into standing down almost nine months ago.
The Sunday Telegraph can also reveal ASADA rejected Earl’s case for a substantial assistance discount in March, leaving the former Raiders star to stew on the career-ending reality of a four-year ban for trafficking and use of banned peptide CJC-1295.
Currently living in Thailand with girlfriend Stephanie Easting, Earl has now instructed his lawyer, Tim *Unsworth, to prepare a challenge before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). The appeal will argue
• His admission to ASADA on August 27, 2013 was coerced by text messages, unlawfully intercepted from Customs officials at Sydney Airport;
• There was duress to immediately accept a provisional suspension on August 29, with the NRL threatening to forcibly stand him down and go public at 4pm that day;
• The NRL’s actions breached anti-doping legislation because they were not entitled to reveal any details until his name was placed on ASADA’s register of findings.
This has still not occurred.
The Sunday Telegraph can also *reveal Earl waited until March 14 to receive a show cause notice from ASADA, which only then revealed its view that his bid for substantial assistance in relation to the activities of sports scientist Stephen Dank should be rejected.
Unsworth replied within a week, but ASADA has still not placed his name on the register of findings. Until ASADA does so, Earl is trapped in procedural limbo because he cannot appeal to the AAT.
“It’s like coming forward has been the worst thing I could have done,” Earl said from Phuket, where he runs a personal training and health food business.
“If other players get show cause notices, they will be entitled to keep playing if they appeal and it’s all done in private. I never got that *opportunity, and ASADA still hasn’t got back to me. There are no time limits on them, like there was on me. It’s like I’ve got no rights at all.”
On August 27 last year, Earl admitted to receiving CJC-1295 from Dank and using it to treat a 2011 shoulder *injury on advice from Dr Ijaz Khan. ASADA presented him with text messages from the phone of Dank, and another man.
Earl suspects they were downloaded by Customs officials at Sydney Airport, as his phone was also seized on return from Thailand in January 2013. Customs officials told Earl they were looking for child pornography. Unsworth will argue in the AAT that Customs had no right to disseminate those text messages to ASADA because they do not relate to the import or export of goods.
“I never thought I was a drug cheat, because of how it all went down,” Earl said. “Those texts were the icing on ASADA’s cake. They played a pretty big role in my admission. ASADA got me a beauty. They told me everything I wanted to hear. I was told it’d take three or four weeks to generate the *infraction notice and then go public.”
That never happened. Two days after opting to bid for substantial *assistance, Earl met with the NRL’s legal team.
They presented an infraction notice and told him a press conference had been scheduled for 4pm that afternoon. Earl claims the NRL threatened to forcibly stand him down if he did not accept a provisional ban straight away, fuelling his paranoia about the story being leaked to media outlets.
“I was rattled,” Earl said. “I felt like they took advantage of me, *because it was uncharted territory.
“They gave me three hours to make a huge decision, but I really had no choice because they were going public anyway. They said they didn’t want the media to leak the story first.
“That’s not my problem, just *because they wanted to tell the world first and look like a bunch of heroes. I’ve still got rights and I’m still entitled to proper process.”
Earl was given a few hours to make a decision that’s now put his life on hold for three-quarters of a year. *Unsworth met the NRL on May 8, warning of the alleged breaches of process and Earl’s desire to challenge them. He has asked the NRL to escalate the matter to its own anti-doping tribunal, which can hear the case at any time after receiving direct evidence from Earl. The NRL has still not responded to his request.
An NRL spokeswoman yesterday defended its decision to remove a player who admitted to drug use from the competition.
“It had no relationship to media *interest,” she said. The NRL also said its tribunal would not hear the matter until further advice is received from ASADA.
ASADA indicated it would not comment until the NRL tribunal *finalised Earl’s case
