Banned until November 2018. 14 months in total.

Wigan announcement in 3...2...1...

No doubt other things will have gone on behind the scenes at Cas, but the decision to release him now looks incredibly stupid. Why would you sack someone that you’ve just paid £150,000 for when they’re only going to miss a season and are now going to sign for one your rivals?

Exactly what I said when he was sacked, probably the most stupid decision by any RL club ever.

thought it would be a two year ban for cocaine

is that not what others previous have had?

or does he get special treament

Truly bizarre. Like previous other cases have been players taking it for a competetive advantage?

I expect he's not exactly flavour of the month amongst his teammates at Cas to put it mildly. He'd hardly be welcomed back with open arms.

For anyone who wants to have a read of the judgements before jumping to conclusions they can be found here https://www.ukad.org.uk/anti-doping-rul ... tegory=541. although the Zak Hardaker one keeps coming up access denied. i assume it hasnt been uploaded properly yet or something (or Wigan dont want to release it )

For anyone who wants to have a read of the judgements before jumping to conclusions they can be found here https://www.ukad.org.uk/anti-doping-rul ... tegory=541. although the Zak Hardaker one keeps coming up access denied. i assume it hasnt been uploaded properly yet or something (or Wigan dont want to release it )

Another case of Wigans legal team being better than those employed by the RFL.
Fits in very nicely with Tomkins going (rumored many, many weeks ago).

Quote ="Angelus"For anyone who wants to have a read of the judgements before jumping to conclusions they can be found here https://www.ukad.org.uk/anti-doping-rul ... tegory=541. although the Zak Hardaker one keeps coming up access denied. i assume it hasnt been uploaded properly yet or something (or Wigan dont want to release it )'" The full judgement is now on twitter, I liked this bit - =#0040BF"He was not a cocaine user & had only taken it before once or twice when he was young & a couple of times after the April 2016 incident" I still don't understand why Cas sacked him?

Quote ="Angelus"For anyone who wants to have a read of the judgements before jumping to conclusions they can be found here https://www.ukad.org.uk/anti-doping-rul ... tegory=541. although the Zak Hardaker one keeps coming up access denied. i assume it hasnt been uploaded properly yet or something (or Wigan dont want to release it )'" The full judgement is now on twitter, I liked this bit - =#0040BF"He was not a cocaine user & had only taken it before once or twice when he was young & a couple of times after the April 2016 incident" I still don't understand why Cas sacked him?

My few initial thoughts:
Minor thought first - Why is his ban deemed to start from 8th September 2017 when he was playing up to 28th September 2017? Surely he was therefore playing during his period of ineligibility and his ban should start on 28th September and end on 29th November 2019? In effect his ban isn’t 14 months.
Secondly, the rationale seems a bit strange. I fully agree that he was facing a troubling time and that he has mental health issues that were well known before the incident, so he’s not just using this as an excuse. However, I worry that the panel decided that his ban could be reduced as he took cocaine whilst intoxicated. This seems to be a bit of a loophole that will be exploited by others in the future.
Thirdly, Cas were right to sack him. The club can’t afford to pay someone for sitting around for 13 months. He’d also breached his contract and undermined the culture and values expected. Paying him for failing a drugs test would send out completely the wrong message to all the other players and staff.
There is a precedent for Cas to now recoup the transfer fee from Hardaker himself. He breached his contract and therefore the club can claim any financial loss as a result of this. The club may well recoup the money paid for him.
I think anyone who takes him on is taking a massive risk. His next screw up is always around the next corner. I’m afraid he is incapable of making the right decision when he is put into difficult situations off the field. I wouldn’t want the constant worry about what he’s going to do next and when. He’s just a ticking time bomb who will inevitably let his next club down at some point.
Finally, he has obviously got some really idiotic friends who he should be walking away from, but won’t. His mates got him off his face, supplied his cocaine and allowed him to take it even thought they know the consequences he might face, even if Zak himself was beyond the point of making a rational decision (again).

On a separate note, it’s poor form for the panel to make his personal issues so clear. Their constant reference to the Jake Livermore case makes it pretty obvious what happened to those who don’t already.

He has still been out socialising with them plenty since the end of last season on their team days/nights out and is very much still a 'mate'.

Agree with a lot of what you're saying, particularly around the loophole of drink and coke - they go hand in hand, how on earth behind drunk could be in any way seem as mitigation is ridiculous.

On the Cas culture front, that's all well and good in principle of the rest of the club/players are clean skins, but doesn't work in reality if plenty of them are at it on a weekend too....

My personal opinion is that the best chance Zak has to get back on track is to sign for a club like Wigan. He needs to get away from his clown 'mates'. If Wigan do sign him and they insist that he moves over there then I think he may have a chance of staying reasonably incident free. If he stays around Ponte area he's an accident waiting to happen again.

That's nonsense, sorry. On a good day Wigan is an hour away. Not far enough if the bright lights are too much of a distraction for him. When he left Leeds it was felt his move would resolve his issues, only for them to reappear. When someone is a thick as Hardaker is, trouble will inevitably follow them around.

If Hardaker's ban is anything to go by, I expect Thomas Minns to get a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again.

"Why would they sack him?"

1. Morals/integrity.
2. To set the record for the rest of the team.
3. To make an example to their young fans.
4. Under pressure from their sponsors.
5. To avoid paying his wages for 14 months whilst he is ineligible to play.
6. After 14 months out he is likely to return a shadow of his former self (remember he'd been rubbish the seasons before he joined Cas).
7. Because he let the team down at the absolute biggest moment.

My take on this is that this is one of those bizarre moments when you just wish the sport was a properly run professional game so you could get the truth about things and not the nonsensical PR spin that will inevitably come out.

There are so, so many issues with this and precisely none of them will ever be resolved by any of the parties involved, just ignored. The time it took to announce his ban is too long, the time it took to charge him was too long, it was 20 days after his failed test that he played against St Helens in the semi final. The public statements released are nonsense, there were no 'exceptional circumstances' just like there weren't when the last five or six players to be caught got lenient bans either. Anyone who got a 2 year ban should be contacting their solicitors about now to make a compensation claim.

But for me the biggest, most glaring anomaly in this is that Wigan clearly knew when his ban would expire months before it was announced. They have been shuffling their cards for a couple of months now to accomodate him in their squad and have not only agreed a deal with Hardaker but also moved on or attempted to move on other players. Now how could they do that so confidently when the ban was still up in the air? Clearly they had inside knowledge of not only the process but the outcome before it was even decided. Rugby League is a professional sport and wherever money goes so does greed and corruption. This whole situation reeks and again Cas are royally shafted.

The competition itself is stronger for him returning though, it adds one more quality player to the handful we already have in Super League. Huge risk for Wigan, especially if they release Tomkins rather than move him or Hardaker to another position.

Moving a few miles doesn’t solve mental health issues, which is why Hardaker can’t make rational decisions. He’ll make the same irrational decisions.

So if someone constantly gets into trouble, its automatically "Mental Health Issues"? What happened to just being a prat who never learns?

That’s the strange thing for me. The panel did not accept that his personals issues meant the ban should be shorter than normal, but then decided that it should be shorter because he was battered at the time.
At point 42 they even write that it was fortuitous that he chose to take cocaine rather than drink more alcohol. Very, very strange given than one is a banned substance and the other isn’t! It’s so strange that I wonder if they mean the opposite, as in the next sentence they say that if he had drunk more alcohol he wouldn’t have been before the panel.

Have UKAD and the RFL set a Precedent here by introducing a mitigating factor, drinking 6 pints of lager and sharing bottles of Whiskey/Vodka with your mates before snorting cocaine is OK to reduce the ban from 2 years to 14 months.

Read the judgement. It’s clear he’s been diagnosed with mental health issues years ago. It’s not like he’s suddenly developed them now he faces a drugs ban.

Yep, tough it’s nothing to do with the RFL.
UKAD have decided that being intoxicated means a shorter ban.

1. The time taken to get the test results is the time that it takes - it is the same for ALL sports. There isn't just one test that takes a couple of hours that gives the results for everything they are looking for. The athlete then has to be contacted and asked if he wants the 'B' sample testing which then requires more time for the testing procedure to be repeated.
2. The time taken to announce his ban is on the same timescale as for other cases where there has been an appeal/dispute of the results and a hearing has to be arranged and conducted - both sides need time to prepare there cases - so not unexpected it's taken so long (a recent ban from boxing was only announced a year after the doping offence).

Having said all that, going out with someone he knew had regular access to drugs, getting blind drunk and then taking drugs seems a bit of a feeble reason to essentially reduce the ban on extenuating grounds. Despite what has been said, some recent judgements have opened several cans of worms and I expect the 'anniversary of a distressing event'/impaired mental function (either due to an event or congenital) cards to be played quite a lot in the future.