Cronulla insider claims players were offered banned peptides while Steve Dank was with club
Josh Massoud
The Daily Telegraph
February 07, 2013 12:00AM
NRL officials believe players from at least one club were given the same growth stimulants - known as peptides - that are now at the centre of the anti-doping investigation into AFL powerhouse Essendon.
Stephen Dank, the sports science guru embroiled in the scandal, consulted for half a dozen NRL clubs before crossing codes.
He spent five seasons under former Manly coach Des Hasler, but his brief stint at Cronulla in 2011 is causing most concern for League bosses. A Cronulla insider said peptides, a combination of amino-acids that promote the body's natural growth mechanisms, were offered to certain players during Dank's short tenure at the club.
The Daily Telegraph yesterday revealed that Sharks players were also given the widely used blood-thinning agent, Warfarin, to promote anaerobic capacity.
The move, however, backfired when several Warfarin users suffered mysterious bruising that sounded alarm bells through the club's medical staff.
Sharks doctor David Givney last night confirmed Dank's sudden departure related to a falling-out between the pair over the proper administration of supplements.
"Stephen was only at the club for a short time in 2011," Givney said. "He and I didn't see eye-to-eye over several things and we parted ways."
Givney would not publicly respond to the claims of peptide and Warfarin use. But it's understood his concerns related to a lack of knowledge about what substances Dank was giving the players.
"That's all I've been instructed to say," Givney added.
Certain varieties of peptide appear on both the 2011 and 2013 WADA prohibited list.
Cronulla's coaching staff are confident no players ingested any banned substances and that the club abided by proper protocol at all times.
Last May a Queensland-based rugby player and coach, Francis Burke, received a four year suspension for possession and trafficking of the banned stimulant, peptide-6.
There's no suggestion that Sharks coaching staff - or that of other NRL clubs that used Dank - had full knowledge of his supplement program. The physiologist also consulted for Souths, Wests Tigers, Penrith and St George Illawarra.
But the bulk of his trail-blazing work was refined at Manly, now famous for trialling injections derived from calf's blood in 2008. Dank introduced the Sea Eagles to Actovegin, a form of cortisone.
Former skipper Matt Orford yesterday revealed he was injected on two occasions to help overcome a groin complaint ahead of the 2008 grand final.
get a load of the headline
It's time for AFL and NRL to clean up acts and introduce blood passports before another premiership is tainted
Paul Kent
The Daily Telegraph
February 07, 2013 12:00AM
GREAT moments in bad timing: At 7.42am Manly issue a statement confirming the club did employ Stephen Dank, from 2006-10. He is the sports science guru at the centre of the doping allegations that have rocked Australian sport.
At 2.02pm former Manly skipper Matt Orford is quoted saying he had calf blood injected into his groin after the 2008 season, when the Sea Eagles finished premiers. The Sea Eagles have never publicly confirmed this.
My blood injections: Former Manly star Matt Orford
At 4.47pm the Bulldogs issue a statement saying Orford had joined the Bulldogs coaching staff, under his former Manly coach Des Hasler.
Suspect? The problem for the Bulldogs, for Manly, for everybody, is that our goodwill has been used up. The benefit of the doubt is gone.
Lance Armstrong, anyone?
The Armstrong case is yet to be closed and the two major football codes in Australia are in the foetal position. In Madrid a trial is currently under way into a Spanish doctor charged with masterminding a doping ring in world cycling. Six hundred blood samples have been frozen.
In New Orleans, Ray Lewis just helped Baltimore to a Super Bowl victory, the same week Sports Illustrated revealed he used a deer antler spray to return from a complete triceps tear, 10 weeks after suffering the injury. By way of comparison, three other players with the same injury in recent times were sidelined six months.
Miracle recoveries, stunning form turnarounds, smoke and mirrors sports science ... we now have a right to suspect if, for no other reason, nothing can ever be believed anymore.
Athletes continue to let us down. Our trust is misplaced.
And while we would like to believe that little old sports like ours, AFL and NRL, are clean, they are not.
Just yesterday, The Australian quoted AFL boss Andrew Demetriou confirming the AFL had secretly stood down players for serious breaches of its illicit drugs policy.
"Club doctors would tell the coach or the football manager that a certain player was not in a condition to play," he said. In other words, a cover-up. A disregard by the AFL to properly address its drug culture.
For years the International Cycling Union had the same whiff about it, refusing to address the drug allegations that dogged it. It wasn't until the sport bordered on farce that the UCI finally got serious, introducing "blood passports".
Unlike urine tests - which never caught Armstrong in more than 500 tests - which are bordering on becoming antique, blood passports record every blood sample, allowing them to be compared with previous samples for irregularities.
As one high-profile drug official said yesterday: "The samples are then monitored within parameters. If they're above or below it's an indication something has occurred."
The NRL is no cleaner.
Right now an NRL player is currently training with his new club after failing an in-house drug test before Christmas.
The NRL is unaware it even happened. The club is not obligated to inform the league.
Where this all ends, after Essendon's approach to the AFL to tell them they believe up to 80 per cent of their players were using a drug "on the edge" of legal, no one knows.
This is a beginning, not an end.
Drug agencies believe there are more revelations, from more clubs in both codes, to come given Dank's apparent reach.
The NRL is refusing to comment, but watching closely. How the NRL has not opened talks with Manly, though, is inexplicable. Wasn't it less than 12 months ago that David Gallop was sacked for being "reactive and not proactive"?
Where's the proactivity here?
Note again, for instance, the time of the Sea Eagles' statement, and marry it into what the statement said: "During that time, we never had any concerns. We always complied with all anti-doping protocols of the WADA Code and the NRL. The club will make no further comment."
They should. How could the Sea Eagles be so confident nothing happened? Essendon's confession was built on the admission it happened right under their noses.
Yet Manly are so confident the same didn't happen to them? Without any investigation?
Such was the speed of Manly's statement it ... only raised more suspicions.
Forget about us, Manly owes it to themselves to launch a proper, independent investigation to ensure their 2008 premiership is not stained.
And the NRL needs to stop watching and get involved.
In recent years coaches have openly admitted sports science is the last frontier to be explored.
It sounds like it already is.
Blood passports are the answer.