ARLC will discuss Flanagan case in final meeting for 2018

Sharks head coach Shane Flanagan will learn his fate this week after the final ARL Commission meeting for the year discusses a report on alleged breaches of his 2014 sanction over the peptides scandal at the club.

The ARLC has several matters on its agenda on Tuesday, including looking at proposals for new media guidelines for the next Telstra Premiership season.

But chief on the list will be the discussion over the NRL Integrity Unit's review of a series of emails involving Flanagan and previous Sharks officials that were discovered this year.

Any penalties or sanctions are expected to be announced on Wednesday.

The emails date back to 2014. This was the season Flanagan was serving a 12-month ban – reduced to nine months as he underwent management and governance courses – for his part in not looking after the welfare of players injected with peptides over a three-month period in 2011.

In December 2013 the NRL handed down the ban on Flanagan, a two-year suspension for former health and conditioning head, Trent Elkin, and a $1 million fine to the club for failing to provide a safe and healthy work environment for players during the supplements saga.

The NRL reduced the fine by $400,000 providing Flanagan and the Sharks met a number of conditions over governance stipulated by the governing body.

One of those conditions was that Flanagan had no contact with the club while suspended.

Fast forward to 2018 and current Sharks CEO Barry Russell self-reported the club over a mysterious $50,000 payment, allegedly in breach of salary cap rules, in 2015 and 2017.

That sparked a forensic look into Sharks computer servers and emails, the results of which will be known in early 2019. The NRL has already said the indiscretions were not on the high-end of cap breaches and that Cronulla had remained well under the cap in 2018.

But during the course of that investigation, the separate matter of Flanagan conversing with officials arose.

The results of that case will cap-off a mixed year for the Sharks.

On the field the NRL side finished the Telstra Premiership in fourth place, losing the preliminary final to Storm 22-6.

Off the field, serious financial hiccups emerged after a slow-down in the revenue flowing from the Sharks residential-retail development on club land adjacent to Southern Cross Group Stadium.

Sponsors have also fallen away, including the lucrative front-of-jersey position, for the Sharks.

Then, on November 10, administration staff were made redundant.