Dank on the scene long before he hit the headlines
Date
August 30, 2013
Roy Masters
Rugby League Columnist
Stephen Dank's long history in professional football demonstrates why clubs hire him: his services are usually free and his multi-team background carries with it the possibility he knows the secrets of opposition teams.
The sports scientist has been associated with seven NRL clubs and at least three AFL clubs including Essendon, whose supplements program last year, implemented by him, has resulted in them being suspended from this year's finals, fined $2 million, lose valuable draft picks and have their coach banned for 12 months.
To Essendon, willing to bargain future health for present glory, Dank became a 21st-century Faust. His year-long program at Essendon, and his role with Cronulla for the first 12 rounds of the 2011 season, are central to the biggest sports story in the history of Australia's two most popular football codes.
Dr Martin Raftery, a former first-grade player with Cronulla and the International Rugby Board's most senior medico, appears to be the first club doctor to question Dank's activities. He was St George's doctor in 1995 when Brian Smith was coach.
Dank offered his services for free and informed the Dragons he was doing a science degree, specialising in sleep studies - always an interest to coaches whose mantra is ''if you snooze, you lose''.
Dank began by filling water bottles and then monitoring player rehab. The Dragons quickly discovered he did not fit in with a culture that promotes the team over the individual and the club brand above, well, anything.
Raftery said, ''I remember him. He had nothing to do with supplements back in 1995 … he upset the physios because they felt he was encroaching on their territory.''
Dank's association with rugby league dates to as early as 1977; former players with Brisbane's Valleys club recall him as a ballboy.
He appeared at South Sydney in the early 1990s when Dr Nathan Gibbs, who played first grade with both the Rabbitohs and Roosters, was the club medico.
Gibbs, who has mentored many young trainers in a long career as a sports medico, including with the Swans where he has been doctor for 15 years, said, ''He wanted to become involved with Souths. He actually lived at my house for six weeks. He was never officially working for Souths but I was showing him what happened. He wanted to get into coaching, sports science, training.''
Gibbs, who said he subsequently crossed paths with Dank at airports and stadiums, is at odds with other club medicos. ''I've known him to be motivated to give athletes the best chance, without cheating. I know he was heavily involved with [coach] Des Hasler at Manly and was all about legally maximising performance.''
Dank had a brief, unmemorable time at Parramatta in 1993 when Mick Cronin was in charge of the Eels. Cronin said, ''When I saw [Dank's name] come up, it rang a bell. I remember him sending me something through the mail. I probably thought he was smarter than me. I did ring Fitzy [former chief executive Denis Fitzgerald] straight away. Fitzy said, 'He was never employed here.'''
Dank is believed to have spent some time at Wests Tigers before joining Manly for six years, ending his association in 2010.
Then-Sea Eagles doctor Paul Bloomfield, now with the Dragons, certainly did not endorse Dank when contacted by Cronulla doctor Dave Givney on April 9, 2011, after a game between the clubs.
A couple of days earlier, as Givney's concerns about Dank became serious, he encouraged Cronulla coach Shane Flanagan to contact Raftery, whom he believed would support his view that Dank's work was questionable.
The Sharks did not pay Dank but he had a four-month consultancy with the AFL's Gold Coast Suns at the same time. Because the AFL heavily funds the Suns, it therefore subsidised the activities of the man now regarded as its public enemy No.1.
Near the end of the 2011 AFL season, Essendon's James Hird - a rookie first-grade coach like Flanagan - suspected other clubs were using supplements and made an inquiry to the AFL to this end.
A month later, his trainer, Dean Robinson, who had worked with Dank at Manly and the Suns, introduced him to Dank, then nicknamed ''The Pharmacist''.
Hird's suspicions about other clubs may have been fuelled by Dank, based on an email Dank sent to Robinson stating his belief Collingwood were using supplements, which was strongly denied.
Dank also had links to the Demons, with text messages to club doctor Dan Bates surfacing during this year's ASADA investigation. In 2011, he was also consulting with then Penrith player, Sandor Earl, who on Thursday admitted to charges of use and trafficking of a prohibited substance. Dank was set to widen his web when the Australian Crime Commission outed him on the ''blackest day in Australian sport.''
