Shadows in the dressing rooms
Shadows in the dressing roomsBrisbane TimesIn the past month the Herald has reported how the pornography king Con Ange is allowed into the
Cronulla Sharks dressing room, freely able to gain access
...
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Shadows in the dressing rooms
July 11, 2009 - 12:32AM
They rub shoulders, do favours, share the bonhomie, but their roles and expectations are difficult to define. Jacquelin Magnay and Kate McClymont report on the new breed of powerful sporting friends.
The floors are concrete hard, splattered with mud and littered with sticky sports tape. The air is thick: humidity from steaming showers tinged with fresh sweat. Sports bags are collapsed open, shirts and ties spilling out at random. Behind the benches on the wall are coathangers of suits, some rumpled, others pressed within an inch of their lives. This is the unglamorous inner sanctum of the rugby league dressing room: yet it is a place so coveted, so precious.
An international report last week, focusing on money laundering and sport, noted: "Popular sport can be a route for criminals to become celebrities by associating with famous people and moving upwards to powerful circles within established society."
What better place to establish connections than the dressing room?
The winner's room is noisier, looser, abundant with bonhomie; the loser's can be a sombre, dark place. Win or lose, however, the rooms are crowded with men. The players are slumped in name-plated spots, showering, dressing, munching on fruit from platters in the middle of the room. Body parts are packed in ice and wrapped in plastic.
But the players are outnumbered. There are the coach and support staff - trainer, conditioner, assistant coach, stats man, doctor, physio, chairman and board members, media manager directing television crews and organising press interviews.
Of late, this scene of apparent mayhem has been infiltrated by powerful friends - behind-the-scenes supporters who clandestinely provide the players with product, money, "opportunities". These men are not official sponsors, yet they have the means and connections to get past security officials guarding the dressing rooms.
Once inside, no one questions their presence.
It is no mystery. These supporters find dressing rooms appealing not for their seclusion but for their rarified status. Being the powerful men pulling strings behind the scenes is a potent ego-booster. It showers a veneer of respectability and opens access to influential networks of people.
In the past month the Herald has reported how the pornography king Con Ange is allowed into the Cronulla Sharks dressing room, freely able to gain access and bring in a couple of female friends. Ange's son had the privilege of being an occasional ball boy for the Sharks. Ange took the club to a pre-season meal at a North Sydney restaurant. Yet officially Ange and the club were furious when the Herald wrote of him as a supporter. Sharks board members were perplexed: they had never met this man who produced and starred - albeit fully clothed and licking ice-cream - in his own porn movie. Club directors claim they didn't know of Ange. He was simply the mate of the then chief executive, Tony Zappia.
What then made him so influential that he could wander, at will, into the rooms, talking to players on a first-name basis?
Over at Parramatta, another club of Ange's acquaintance when Zappia was the Eels football manager, a different group of men wandered the dressing room labyrinth. The players knew them as the Italian connection and they offered players the inside running on property plays. One of them, the recently elected Parramatta chairman, Roy Spagnolo, would backslap players win, lose or draw. His property mates Vince Lombardo - nicknamed Desi by the players because of his resemblance to Desi Arnez - George Gaitanos and, later, Ange were dressing-room regulars. Ange went with the players on an off-season overseas tour.
Spagnolo would have players over to his Koala Way, Horsley Park, property for lunch, and organise visits to the Griffith winery he part-owns. Only Spagnolo was an official sponsor - through his property development company Brenex - and managed three Eels players. Their presence and familiarity with the club core was never questioned.
Martin Tolar, chief executive of the Australasian Compliance Institute, says he is unsurprised at the recent scrutiny of football clubs. Clubs must brace for further inspection, he says, not by media but by government regulators. "We have seen that at both Cronulla and Parramatta," says Tolar. "The tail has been wagging the dog and there are issues of corporate governance. These clubs need skilled directors who are experts in areas of law and business, rather than ex-footballers. There is a great concern that the governance of these types of clubs has not kept up with the size of their organisation."
Tolar says the Australian Transaction and Reporting and Anaylsis Centre - which monitors money laundering - is turning its focus from financial institutions to not-for-profit clubs, pubs, bookies and real estate agents.
"Any organisation that now deals in large amounts of cash will have to be prepared to put in place a whole raft of new policies. We have seen in the past week about threats involving a former chief executive and a director, potential salary cap breaches, the ATO looking at phoenix companies and a story about a former chief executive using a company owned by his wife that appears to be a conflict of interest. All of these things are basic governance issues. It worries me that if the basic issues are not being handled appropriately then what will happen when the attention turns to the big international issues?"
SEPARATELY last week the international Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering - established by the G7 20 years ago - released its Money Laundering Through The Football Sector report, noting the big money flowing into sport brings higher risk of fraud and corruption. "Sport can also be used as a channel to launder dirty money," says the report.
Most sports, including the rugby codes, soccer, cricket, horse racing and car racing are all vulnerable, says the report. And criminal activity is not confined to sport's top end. "There are connections between criminal organisations [including international organised crime] and the world of football. Social prestige is an important factor. Popular sport can be a route for criminals to become celebrities by associating with famous people and moving upwards to powerful circles within established society."
A regular at the Parramatta rooms was Brendan Gaffney, a Westpac "relationship manager" whose duties involved new lending and managing a large portfolio of business clients. Now serving five years for embezzling $3.9 million from the bank, Gaffney's trial heard he used some of the money to bet on behalf of unnamed high-profile people in the hope of improving his client-base and career.
The Australian reported Gaffney was introduced to the Eels by Mario Libertini, a close Spagnolo associate and now an Eels director. Libertini told the newspaper Gaffney worked at the branch where Libertini banked and ate at Libertini's restaurant.
"I can't confirm whether he was hanging around Parramatta or not," Libertini said.
The Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering says sports management is still often done by volunteers who are inexperienced and under-skilled. Fearing the impact of a bad image, including potential loss of sponsors, sports administrators often under-report their circumstances.
Criminals often look to sport for the opportunity of a reputation separate from crime. Football can offer a patron status because, too often, little attention is paid to the source of largesse. Rubbing shoulders with celebrity athletes can reward wealthy individuals beyond material gain.
Laundered money is used to buy celebrity and influence. "The criminal is buying an entrance ticket to a social milieu," the report states. And a social milieu where business mixes with players can also provide invaluable information.
Betting on rugby league has grown exponentially. Punters wager on who will be the first try-scorer, which team will lead at half-time, who'll be man of the match or judged the season's best. Information from players about an early possible return from injury, for example, or a throwaway line about the team's mood, can inform a bet. The invisible men who hang about absorbing snippets are the most sought after for insider information.
At the international Play The Game conference last month, the Australian Anti Doping Authority's chief executive and a former tennis official, Richard Ings, spoke about preventing match fixing. "Be brave," he said. "It is nasty out there." Professional gamblers, says Ings, must be identified and excluded from player areas and locker rooms. Tennis has had a number of suspect matches.
Matthew and Andrew Johns raised eyebrows with their friendship with Eddie Hayson, the controversial punter and owner of the Sydney brothel Stiletto. While still playing for the Newcastle Knights, Andrew Johns co-owned several racehorses with Hayson, a former bankrupt and a regular figure at racing inquiries.
One horse, Regreagan, was named after Matthew's character on Channel Nine's The Footy Show .
Questions were raised when a huge betting plunge backed the Knights to lose. Only after the bets were placed was it revealed that Andrew Johns was injured and would not play.
Hayson denied inside information. He said his was a small wager - "a couple of thousand" - and that he got his information from newspaper reports that Johns had injured his neck. An NRL investigation found nothing amiss.
The former American mob boss Michael Franzese - now known as "the Born Again Don" - painted a frightening picture of organised crime's involvement in match-fixing.
Franzese told of targeting sporting figures, encouraging them to build up gambling debts and then forcing them to fix a game when they couldn't pay.
"Finally, you say, 'OK, this is exactly how we are going to work this out. Tomorrow night you are favourites to win by 10 points. You make sure you win by six. I don't care how you do it - do whatever you have to do. If you do this a couple of times, we're even. If you don't do this a couple of times then don't worry - you don't have to call me any more. I'll find you.'"
