What is the biggest Aussie sports scandal of the 21st century?

Best m much as Aussies pride themselves on sport, there is a dark underbelly to all that gold. These are the country’s biggest scandals.

From best mates falling out to the “blackest day”. Booing to “don’t blush, baby”. Ben Cousins to Cameron Bancroft.

For every Sir Donald Bradman, Cathy Freeman, Oarsome Foursome or Phar Lap, sadly there are also a number of athletes, teams or moments that have tarnished the green and gold’s generally strong international sporting reputation.

To celebrate the launch of the new news.com.au app, we’re celebrating the people, places and events we’ll never forget from the first quarter of the 21st century by asking for Australia’s view. Our 25@25 series will finally put to bed the debates you’ve been having at the pub and around dinner tables for years – and some that are just too much fun not to include.

Racism, infidelity, quitting on your teammates or perhaps the sporting issue many Aussies struggle to reconcile with more than any other – performance enhancing drugs – are just some of the inescapable scourges we’ve been forced to face.

Australian sport has had some horror blights since the turn of the century, but what is the worst?

We’ll let you decide the order, but these are our biggest sports scandals of the past 25 years.

Laydown Sally 

In a gold-laden 2004 Athens Olympics for Australia, one of the biggest stories involved a team that effectively failed to finish. Sally Robbins famously quit rowing with about 400m remaining in the women’s eights final when the Aussie team was in medal contention. They ultimately finished last, about 10 seconds behind second-last Germany, and Robbins’ name was etched in history.

Sally Robbins stops rowing during the women's eight final at the Athens Olympics. Photo: Colleen Petch

Melbourne Storm salary cap

Emerging from the Super League wars of the late 1990s, the Storm quickly became one of Australia’s most successful clubs. That all came crashing down on April 22, 2010, when massive salary cap breaches over a five-year period were made public. It led to the stripping of two premierships and a huge fine, among other penalties.

Adam Goodes racism

This is a difficult incident to summarise in a couple of sentences. One of the key events came in 2013 when a young girl called Goodes an “ape” during an AFL game. While Goodes repeatedly said the young girl should not be blamed for the incident, he began to get booed at games across the country and the Swans legend eventually retired and subsequently largely withdrew himself from the footy public.

Shane Warne drugs

On the eve of the 2003 One-Day Cricket World Cup, a bombshell report swept Australia that Shane Warne had tested positive to an illegal drug. Warne had taken a diuretic that can be used as a masking agent for steroids, claiming it had been given to him by his mother to help hide a double chin. He was handed a one-year ban from the sport and Ricky Ponting’s team still managed to win the tournament.

Wayne Carey cheating

In another where-were-you moment, the North Melbourne captain fronted a media conference in 2002 to admit to an affair with Kelli Stevens, the wife of teammate Anthony Stevens, after she was seen following Carey into a bathroom at Glenn Archer’s house. Soap opera writers would be proud if they came up with that one.

Wayne Carey (left) and Anthony Stevens clash after their famous falling out. Photo: News Corp

Sandpaper

This one might take some beating and involves, of course, the use of sandpaper to attempt to manipulate the cricket ball during Australia’s 2018 tour of South Africa. Steve Smith, David Warner and Cam Bancroft all copped bans and, in some ways, Aussie cricket is still trying to live it all down.

Essendon supplements saga

On February 7, 2013, the “blackest day” in Australian sport dropped when the Australian Crime Commission released a report called “Organised Crime and Drugs in Sport”. The scandal involved the use of “peptides”, the Cronulla Sharks were also implicated and sports scientist Stephen Dank became a household name.

Raygun

Similar to the Lay Down Sally affair, the performance of Rachael Gunn when breakdancing made its Games debut in Paris last year sadly overshadowed many of Australia’s brilliant Olympic efforts. Legendary memes, court battles over stage shows, Halloween costumes, an Australian Story episode – this saga had it all and stayed in the news for months.

David Warner fronts the media after the infamous “Sandpaper” scandal. (Photo: Peter Parks/AFP)

Raygun made all of our heads spin for months. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN/AFP)

West Coast Eagles drugs

Roughly 20 years ago, West Coast and the Sydney Swans fought out one of the great rivalries in modern AFL history. Sadly around the same time, the Eagles began getting implicated in a series of off-field dramas. Ben Cousins was the sad poster boy of the club’s issues with illicit drugs, facing repeated sanctions before he was sacked in late 2007.

Don’t blush baby

In early January 2016, sports presenter Mel McLaughlin interviewed West Indies superstar Chris Gayle live in a Big Bash match in Hobart. What transpired shocked everyone looking on. The batsman did his best to proposition the reporter, complimenting her eyes, stating “we can have a drink later” and then adding “don’t blush baby”. It was a horrendous incident made even worse by Channel 10 somehow deciding to tweet the interview with the hashtag “smooth” before it was deleted. Apologies soon flew but it was too little, too late in a black eye for Gayle, the sport and the broadcaster.

Not just a sports nut? Take the rest of our 25@25 polls

Originally published as What is the biggest Aussie sports scandal of the 21st century?