EXCLUSIVE
A defaulted grand final and an internal draft to reinforce the ranks of any club stripped of players because of doping sanctions are among the contingency plans the NRL has drawn up in response to the drugs scandal.
NRL chief executive David Smith confirmed to the Herald he had been working with his administration to prepare responses in the event a team is banned on the eve of this year's grand final because of doping violations.
Smith met the chief executive of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, Aurora Andruska, for four hours on Friday, and consulted Australian Crime Commission chief John Lawler by phone on Monday.
"We have done a number of contingency plans in the background in terms of the information in front of us," Smith said. "We've got any potential scenario covered.
"I don't know enough of the [doping] details to know whether we will get to a historic forfeit of a grand final. But we would have to look at it if a number of players were banned for taking performance-enhancing drugs." NRL rules allow a player charged by ASADA with a doping infraction to continue playing until his case is heard. However, should the player subsequently be banned for two years by the NRL doping tribunal, the premiership points his team earned while he was playing would be stripped.
Should the timing of the ASADA investigation process and the convening of the NRL doping panel cascade into grand final week, one team could be forced to forfeit all premiership points and lose its place in the decider, leaving the other team without an opponent.
It is more likely the NRL will move quickly against any team with a significant number of players suspected of doping, banning them from playing for points in the same way Melbourne Storm were punished in 2010 for salary cap breaches.
The administration would be willing to take the heat of the furore from fans, aware of the greater damage and international embarrassment of a team stepping on to the dais on grand final day to accept the premiership trophy without having played a match.
However, ASADA's interviews with players and the agency's recommendations on sanctions will need to be well advanced for the NRL to gain sufficient information to disqualify a team within, say, the next two months.
Smith said the NRL was better placed than the AFL to deal with the immediate disqualification of a large number of players who accept shorter bans of six months.
The NRL does not have a draft, while the AFL does have a strictly regulated internal and external system. "We do have the advantage of not having a draft," Smith said. "We have thought of a number of situations."
Asked if other NRL clubs would be required to supply a certain number of players each, in the same way the incipient Super League in the mid 1990s allocated talent to start-up teams, Smith said: "We would all band together. In the background, the clubs have all been fantastic. They have demonstrated they are a real band of brothers."
Should any of the sanctions the NRL Doping Panel impose against a club or a player be considered too lenient, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Rugby League Board can appeal.
For this reason, calls for amnesties and a deferral of all sanctions until the end of the season are likely to fall on deaf ears at NRL headquarters and ASADA.
Smith also rejected any possibility of the AFL receiving preferential treatment by ASADA.
"This is a bloody serious issue," he said. "It is all about integrity, and you can't have a flaw in the integrity. WADA would overturn any decision which advantaged one code over another."
Andruska gave the same answer to the Herald on Friday when asked whether the AFL had been given a rails run on the drugs crisis.
"Absolutely not," she said. "Whatever I do, I have the scrutiny of WADA. We put ourselves up as a world leader in the fight against drugs in sport. How would we look if WADA overturned our sanctions?
"It would be the worst thing for our international reputation. I have a document given to the AFL and the NRL. It is the same document."
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