Johnson’s club in turmoil

Shaun Johnson has only just signed with Cronulla but he and his new team-mates could face the brutal reality of having no coach from next Tuesday if the ARL Commission finds Shane Flanagan committed a raft of alleged breaches and imposes sanctions.

The Sydney Morning Herald can reveal Flanagan isn’t just facing allegations of contacting Sharks officials about player recruitment during his year-long suspension in 2014 for his role in the peptides scandal.

He is also under heavy scrutiny for salary cap discrepancies that have surfaced since he returned to the club; discrepancies that have come into sharp focus since Cronulla chief executive Barry Russell self-reported to the NRL this year about possible cheating prior to Russell taking over in February.

Russell did so when he unearthed a minor indiscretion about an undeclared third-party agreement. Now, that unprecedented honesty – by rugby league standards – could cost them the coach that delivered the Sharks their first premiership.

Four years ago, the NRL was slammed for allowing Flanagan to return to coaching after he was suspended for governance failures that saw players injected with banned substances under the supervision of sports scientist Stephen Dank during 2011.

Now, a new day of reckoning has arrived. Of all the events that have played out at Cronulla in recent years, Flanagan’s potential exit could be the most dramatic.

The NRL integrity unit has, for six months, combed through computer servers, laptops and mobile phones, including those belonging to board members.

On Tuesday, the integrity unit will hand down its findings concerning Flanagan at a commission meeting in Sydney.