Sydney’s ANZ Stadium will be hit by a tide of blue, white and black on Sunday as the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks seek to end a half century of hurt. The Sharks have been in three grand finals since their founding in 1967 and never won one. The little battlers from the Sutherland shire are now poised to finally get their hands on rugby league’s ultimate prize, with only the Melbourne Storm in their way.
ANZ Stadium will be filled with the Sharks faithful bar one lifelong supporter: Damian Irvine, the man born in Engadine, who went to the same school as current Cronulla players like Chad Townsend, and whose love of the Sharks was so strong that he eventually became chairman of the club. Irvine fulfilled the sporting dream that few supporters get to, going from a diehard fan to actually running the club, until his exit at the height of the Asada scandal.
“I sponsored the club for 17 years through my businesses, a lot of my mates played there,” he explains. “I worked pretty much seven days a week and my outlet each weekend was get to the football and yell for 80 minutes. I’d go wherever the boys played, a bit like an English football fan. I must have seen literally hundreds and hundreds of games in a row for about 11 years.”
Cronulla’s history is one of battle and fighting for survival. Many times the Sharks have been on the brink of the abyss. “We were always a start-up and always seen as the little brother to St George,” Irvine says. “We’ve had many receivership battles.”
In 2009 Irvine got involved in an official capacity as the crises were once again mounting for the Sharks, with off-field issues, player scandals and financial strain combining to create a perfect storm. “It coincided with St George Bank saying you’ve borrowed enough over the years … you’re broke,” Irvine remembers. “They were really putting pressure on the club and when it all unraveled, the PR and brand along with the financial, the club was in dire straits.”
In came a new board, with Irvine as chairman, in a bid to rescue the club. They were given the reins and then the real hard work began. But under his leadership and with a new coach in Shane Flanagan appointed after Ricky Stuart’s exit, Cronulla started to rise from the mire once more. Player recruitment was smart, skipper Paul Gallen was retained and the club’s financial position slowly improved. “Shane’s done a brilliant job. We built around him. He recruited well. We recruited about 10 of the players that will play in the grand final on Sunday.”
Then came the spectre of Asada and the “blackest day in Australian sport”. Cronulla imploded, sponsors walked, staff departed and it was ground zero once more. In 2014 the Sharks finished with the wooden spoon. “The club was flying, we were debt free, we had a new CEO in place and then the Asada thing blew up in our face.”
Irvine resigned his post in March 2013 as the storm gathered pace. He had no knowledge of the supplements regime which became the subject of the Asada investigation, but walked away to help the club rebuild with a clean slate. Irvine says the supplements saga had a massive impact on his life and his family’s. “Not just for me but for all the staff there who copped the phone calls, the bad press and all that.
“To be blindsided, which I was, by all of that… I don’t think they were at fault at all in 2011. They got done by a three card trick with the best of intentions to try and improve the club, they dropped the ball in terms of checks and measures. To go through all that work and build it back up, and then for that to come up in 2013, was devastating.”
Three years on, Irvine looks back at that period: “The amount of pressure everyone was under was immense, unprecedented. I think the way it was handled, by both Asada and the governments, also didn’t help at all. We were hung out to dry by a lot of people and there’s a lot of pain there. Weeks like this, it still tingles there and you wonder ‘what if’. But all the trials and tribulations have come together to create the team that’s in the grand final.”
He may have left Cronulla and now lives thousands of kilometres away with a new sporting passion, as the head of commercial at English soccer club Wycombe Wanderers, but the hurt of the Asada scandal lingers. Irvine is adamant the Sharks have learnt plenty from that dark time. “Maybe it gave us a little bit of life experience that you have to be hard edged at times. This team do have a hard edge, they’ve learned that through some really tough times. Maybe that’s what the club needed to do to get this big one out of the way, lets hope they can.”
Sharks fans from all over the globe will gather at Homebush on Sunday in the hope their club will make history. But Irvine won’t be there out of respect for the new administration in charge. He’ll watch the game on TV in London in the company of another Sharks diehard.
“I’ll be at Adams Park on Saturday, where I should be with a new club I love, watching from afar with an old mate Brendan Cowell,” Irvine says. “He’s a big Sharks man. We’ll sit and watch here on Sunday morning with big grins on our faces and watch everyone go suitably nuts.”
Irvine refuses to indulge in “what ifs” and hypotheticals until a grand final victory is secured. But this rugby league tragic is a believer in omens and in Cronulla’s 50th year, just weeks after Ron Massey’s death, he is daring to dream. A win won’t change the past but it will create a bright new future.
“Scars are scars and they’ll always be there. Remembering those and ensuring that you learn from that and make sure it doesn’t happen again, is the important thing. It won’t change the pain I was going through, it won’t change the pain for Shane and other people on the board. But what it will do is we’ll remember it and move on. It would be brilliant for a whole new generation, who didn’t know the stories of ‘78 and ‘73, and the Super League grand final and the minor premierships. I think that’s what’s massive for the club.”
