Is Matthew Wright a drug cheat?

[Bull Shark]

Haven't we played this one out already?

In the red corner: cheaters are cheats and cheating is cheatingly cheating no excuse you're dead to me for knowing peptides exist.

In the blue corner: club's failing a duty of care to players, trusted advisors not doing their job properly, following suit of trusted leaders (the Australian vice captain no less) Paul Gallen, quasi scientists holding themselves as medical practitioners, blurred lines in the rules.

You're either in one camp or the other.

yet funnily enough, the truth or the line or whatever you want to call it probably lays somewhere in between...


I can understand those who want to tar every sharks player with the same brush in terms of their responsibility, but within any playing group nowadays there are so many different personality types and cultural differences, especially given the number of polynesian guys that are in the NRL. And it's these young islander blokes who I sympathise with greatly because the vast majority of them are pretty naive to a lot of things going on around them besides what they're doing when they're on the field with a football in their hands.

So I believe it's entirely possible that some sharks players just went with the flow on this, trusting the word of the people who administered the supplements / drugs and the senior players who supposedly gave them the green light in these meetings.

Having said that, nobody but these players themselves will ever really know their intent when this stuff was happening - ie whether deep down they knew what they were doing was wrong or whether they were just genuinely naive enough not to think harder about it for themselves.


imo the buck really stops with those people who knew this program was outside the rules but decided to go through with it anyway.

At the end of the day, I hope the one big positive change to come of out of this whole sordid mess is that players of all ages and cultures and backgrounds ect learn that they need to be fully cognisant and 100% responsible re anything and everything they do and take - because ignorance is no longer acceptable.

 

[Porthoz]

Exactly. Matthew Wright, 20, (from a Polynesian culture, where deference to authority and elders has more credence than in Anglo world) going against the grain and telling the Australian Vice Captain, and his Club Captain, and his sole source of income, and someone holding himself out as a doctor/scientist, and (allegedly) the club doctor, and putting his entire future career (which he has probably foresaken all other avenues of higher education, or trades or skills) and his reputation and saying:

"I'm not taking that, and you are all cheats if you do".

Yep, defintiely hang him forever for that decision.

Or he could just say... "I'm not taking that".

I do understand what you're saying, but in the end, he cannot shirk the responsibility for what goes in his body.
He shouldn't however, due to the mitigating circumstances you mention, be punished as harshly as others, like the club doctor, his captain, his coach and the club.

 

[subsbligh]

Not anymore that's for sure Porthoz!

 

[Morkel]

This might be better off merged with the Cronulla / ASADA thread.

Anyway, I don't necessarily like Paul Kent but here he asks the questions that all fans should be asking, and why people like myself simply can't let it go and consider the matter over.

Paul Kent: Shane Flanagan must address the elephant in the room before media can move on

SHANE Flanagan turns up the first day the Cronulla players are allowed back and seems surprised he gets asked questions about the supplements scandal.
Who ever saw that coming?
Clearly not Flanagan. He was either unprepared or ill-equipped to answer the questions which, in the fair dinkum stakes, were hardly the Nuremberg trials.

In fact, in the scheme of things, it was fairly gentle questioning.
The question that tipped Flanagan over the edge?

“Are you sorry for allowing your players to be injected with illegal substances?”
That’s it.
Flanagan turned and walked, but not before turning to give the reporter the hairy eyeball and causing him to shiver, you assume, in his shoes.
Flanagan’s justification is a claim he has answered these questions before and that now is all about moving on.
Well, he has and he hasn’t.
He has certainly answered some questions, and to some people. Not one quote he has given, though, has been open to cross examination.
I have some questions I’d like answered, which so far he has not gone near:
Why was Stephen Dank allowed in the dressing room, as captured by Fox Sports cameras, for seven weeks after Dr David Givney sent out an email on April 6, 2011 to say Dank’s involvement at the club must stop?
Why were the players told by the club the performance enhancing program was “top secret” and “not to tell anyone else”?
How was a contract extension negotiated at Cronulla during the time the NRL banned him from having “direct or indirect contact” with the club?
How was Steve Price appointed assistant coach when, again, the head coach was not allowed any direct or indirect contact in the interview process?
Did he see any tablets and creams being handed out in the dressing room before games after the injection program was stopped?
Why is Isaac Gordon suing the club over peptides when he was not one of the 17 players issued with an ASADA infraction? Or was the ASADA investigation incomplete or, dare we ask, the most likely scenario, incompetent?
What does he say to Stewart Mills’ mum, who said Flanagan should be banned for life?


These are not agendas.
These are legitimate questions. Why isn’t every fair minded NRL fan asking them?
Given the NRL’s investigation, its findings and its punishment had zero transparency, they are questions that remain.
Would you feel comfortable letting your son play at Cronulla?
Flanagan had to be interviewed three times by the NRL executive before Dave Smith, Todd Greenberg, Jim Doyle and Nick Weekes believed he was ready to come back. Just a few weeks into it, he has shown signs it might have been premature.
Before Christmas has even arrived he is carrying on like a sour tart, telling the media last week there was a ditch next to the ground he would like to put “some of my favourite journos” and, the next, storming off when he is asked if he is going to say ... sorry?
Cronulla’s credibility is in tatters. It seems they are not interested in fixing it.
And unfortunately the NRL is simply not travelling well enough at the moment to make us trust they have got it right in regard to the Sharks without credible, transparent evidence supporting them.

If Monday truly was about a fresh start for the club the smart move would have been to turn up, turn on the cameras, and let everybody ask whatever question they wanted. Put the clock on, you’ve got an hour and then after today it ends.
The questions could have been answered openly, respectfully, and if the media then did not let it go Flanagan could rightfully say sorry, you had your chance and I’m not going to keep rehashing it.
But he can’t while ever he refuses to answer them in an open forum.
The misguided notion that there is no obligation to answer any questions like the above, because the matter has been dealt with, or because it's a private matter, or it’s nobody else’s business, or however you want to justify it, is not true.
Why?
The Sharks and the NRL own the TV rights, they own the sponsorships, the memberships, the crowd receipts, all of it.
But what they do not own is the public trust.
That is loaned to them by the public and it underpins all of the above.
Without trust, the rest of it goes away.
And while ever Cronulla continues to hide behind refusals to be transparent and aggressive media conferences, how can we ever give them the benefit of the doubt and learn to trust them again?

 

[Bull Shark]

makes me wonder who the peanuts are with the 'media manager' jobs at some of these clubs ... Either that or the coaches themselves are the peanuts for not spending half an hour with their club media manager & GM to run through some possible questions / key messages prior to the daily presser.

Not just talking about this one with the Sharks either, you see this sort of thing time and again in the NRL where coaches act surprised by an obvious line of questioning they were obviously hoping not to hear ... The absolute worst thing you can do is turn on the media or pull down the shutters with a "no comment" type response.. it's like chumming shark infested waters.

What these boofheads don't realise is that a little bit of honesty and openness can go a hell of a long way to shutting down a sensitive issue.