Does anybody remember Aiton's mysterious illness in 2015 tho?
He was out for weeks with no real explanation from coaching staff, I always thought this had summat to do with the drugs ban, whether they weren't playing him whilst investigations were ongoing?

yep

No one cares, you're the only opposition fan rabbiting on about it.

catalan said he served the ban with them he wasnt the only player to of fought it till the end when took the ban. brearley84 should worry about his own clubs history but that wouldnt take to long . lol

No this story is misleading, the drugs were apparently been taken by all Cronulla Sharks players in 2011, so if he did take any he had been off them for 3 years before we signed him. Thats even if they did take them anyway.
The majority of the players,including Gallen, served their '12 month ban' (actually 4 games), in 2014 as the Sharks had nothing to play for anyway, even though all the players denied any wrong doing in the first place
Aiton didn't and (as he was allowed) pleaded not guilty, and apparently they have retroactively banned him, whatever that means?

Of course you could ignore all these facts if you were a fan of a team that managed to finish below us in our worst ever season

Still, at least we know they're clean.

No way have Hudds players ever taken anything remotely performance enhancing. Ever.

Maybe they should.

They might actually win something.

All very cloak-and-dagger stuff at the time.

Nothing to do with the Leeds club though... obviously.

The cloak-and-dagger stuff, that is.

Wasn't Sam Barlow one of theirs initially?

I would doubt it very much, not really sure if any performance enhancing drug would take effect if it was only taken for the 3/4 weeks a year the pacific island squads are together

Obviously if Leeds thought Aiton was taking a performance enhancing drug they wouldn't just say he was ill, they would sack him.
If the RFL found out Leeds knew anything like that they would probably have docked us a massive amount of points and ended any playoff hopes

Didn't you have a folk hero player at your place Brandon Pearson AKA Brandon Costin who had a bit of an issue with drugs and had to do a runner from the NRL?

Glass houses and all that.

Also Aiton was hardly pivotal in Leeds winning anything, great at Wakefield never seemed to do it for Leeds.

He was very good up until his injury in 2015.

But you are right, he wasn't really pivotal as he was missing for the CC final, the league run in and the SL final.

He formed a very effective partnership with Cuthbertson.
But he was made to look more important because we had lost Sutcliffe and then lost Burrow briefly and were therefore low on spine players in general

Sinfield at hookerand Sutcliffe and McGuire in the halves is arguably stronger than a team with Aiton in it (depending on how much defence Sinfield could get through compared to 5 years a go)