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Despite the 17 members of the 2011 Cronulla Sharks team accepting a deal from ASADA that involved backdated suspensions, I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of the drugs scandal that has dominated rugby league headlines of late.
However, one narrative that I’ve yet to hear is just how lucky the NRL is that the 2011 Cronulla Sharks didn’t have a successful season.
Can you imagine how complex this situation could have been if the Sharks had won the premiership, and were then found to have systematically cheated?
The NRL would surely need to strip them of said hypothetical premiership, just as they did to the Melbourne Storm after their salary cap rorting came to light?
Even if the Sharks didn’t win the premiership in 2011, it could have been just as embarrassing and ugly if they had made the top eight, and eliminated genuine premiership contenders in the finals series.
Thankfully, the Sharks finished the 2011 season in 13th place on the ladder, well out of finals contention. Yet that’s not to say the team didn’t have an influence on the season.
Cronulla won seven games in 2011, and some of those victories – now said to be aided by performance-enhancing drugs – had a significant impact upon the teams that were defeated.
St George Illawarra lost to the Sharks in Round 2, but went on to finish 5th on the ladder, just one point behind the Wests Tigers. The Dragons’ loss to the Sharks therefore cost them a top-four finish.
In Round 15, the Sharks defeated the Bulldogs, a team that went on to finish just outside the top eight in ninth spot, tied on 28 points with the eighth-placed Newcastle Knights, who obviously made the finals. So the Dogs’ loss to the Sharks cost them a finals berth.
The Sharks’ Round 17 win over the Rabbitohs also affected the Bunnies season, who ended up 10th on the ladder with 26 points. However, two points against the Sharks would have seen them on equal points with the eight-placed Knights, with for-and-against deciding who would have qualified for the finals.
It’s all academic now, but those teams have a legitimate gripe, in terms of their season being drastically altered because they lost to a club that was injecting prohibited substances into their players.
Losses are one thing, but I wonder if any players were seriously injured playing against Cronulla in 2011? Did the Sharks taking the banned peptide CJC-1295 and the growth hormone GHRP-6 provide them with advantages that actually resulted in opposition players getting hurt?
That’s not a hypothetical question; that’s an appropriate concern.
Speaking of hypotheticals, what if the New South Wales Blues, skippered by the Sharks’ Paul Gallen, had won the 2011 State of Origin series?
Gallen, you’ll remember, was almost a one-man army in that series, and won the man of the match award in Game 2. I seem to remember a few pundits claiming his performance in that second match was ‘super-human’, which obviously takes on a sinister context considering recent developments.
In many respects, it’s fortunate that New South Wales didn’t win that series, or you can imagine the noise that would be generated from Queensland, a state full of fans that need no encouragement when it comes to conspiracy theories, or a belief in a Sydney-fuelled bias against their beloved Maroons.
Origin banter aside, you can never begrudge someone for having an issue with losing to an opponent that has cheated, even if the individual(s) involved didn’t know what they were doing was illegal.
For the players involved in the Sharks’ drug fiasco, it seems like the end of this long-running drama is somewhat over. However, the taint against their names – and the club – will live on, and many questions still remain, none bigger than what the NRL would have done if Cronulla were successful that season.