Paul Gallen hails Cronulla Sharks’ resilience in the face of yet another crisis, as coach Shane Flanagan is deregistered by the NRL

As Cronulla came to terms with yet another damaging scandal, Paul Gallen sat alongside his teammates and CEO and spoke with pride of his club’s ability to climb off the canvas time and again.

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• Wests Tigers CEO banned over Farah deal

Eight years ago, Shane Flanagan famously purchased a boxing ring for his cash-strapped club on eBay.

On Wednesday, Sharks co-captain Paul Gallen boldly described Cronulla “the most resilient brand in Australian sport” as once again, the battered club fights to climb off the canvas.

Backed by the club’s most senior players including Matt Prior, Matt Moylan, Aaron Woods, Andrew Fifita, Chad Townsend and Josh Dugan, Gallen and CEO Barry Russell fronted a press conference to break their silence on Flanagan’s deregistration.

The Sharks show solidarity after yet another body blow. (Brett Costello)

“At times like these, you find out a lot about people. Who’s with you, who’s not,’’ Gallen said.

“I’ll say this about this club, it’s the most resilient brand in Australian Sport.

“We’ve faced going broke half a dozen times, we’ve been through scandals, but we’re still here fighting and we will continue to be.

“Even when we were struggling in years gone by, we’re still a side that teams don’t want to play.

“We’ve got one of the superstars in the game in Shaun Johnson, who has joined our club and that’s one of the first things he said, ‘I want to come and play for this club because you’re a tough club and a chance to get into a grand final.’

“The resilience this place shows, no matter how many times we’re kicked while we’re down and how we keep getting back up again out on that field is pretty amazing.’’

Gallen was adamant his club would not break. (Brett Costello)

Seated beside Gallen, Sharks CEO Barry Russell announced assistants John Morris and Jim Dymock would takeover as interim coaches, while refusing to water down the gravity of the $800,000 fine and suspension of Flanagan due to a breach of strict rules related to having no contact with the club during his 12-month ban in 2014.

“I’m very disappointed because of the actions of past leadership, club officials and staff at this club,’’ Russell said.

“I’ve been informed that there has been an enormous amount of communication between our head coach and those people throughout the 12-month suspension that Shane was under.

“And as CEO of the club we have to accept responsibility that we broke the rules.

“If you break the rules there are consequences. And we are paying for those right now.

“It is sad for our fans, our players that we are dealing with this.

“From my point of view I’m going to do whatever it takes to get through this matter and clear us. The integrity of this club, our governance needs to be first class.’’

Senior players were on hand to show their support. (Brett Costello)

Russell said the club intended to appeal the severity of the fine. He added that he garnered no regret for self-reporting an undeclared third-party player payment, a relatively minor indiscretion believed to be worth about $50,000, to the NRL in June.

“No, I don’t [regret it]. I had to self-report. If you haven’t got your integrity you haven’t got anything. And I would do that same thing again,” Russell said.

“If you’ve done the wrong thing you have to suffer the consequences.

“No one is bigger than the game, no one is bigger than the club. And I am determined that this club … I want to make it something that everyone is proud of.

“Absolutely not at all [did I think the NRL would investigate 2014 emails]. That was brought to light a couple of weeks ago. I had no idea at all that there was an issue there.

“Obviously part of that [fine] is a suspended sentence. We have come in here, I self-declared a financial issue some time ago. It’s been an ongoing investigation. Unfortunately it has led down a path to this 2014 issue as well as other salary cap issues.

“I think the fact that we self-reported, we are working with the NRL doing whatever we can to rectify the situation and I feel if we co-operate then we have solid grounds to reduce that.”

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