Few rugby league players are more notorious than John Elias. The fearsome-looking forward not only intimidated his opponents on the field for first grade clubs like Canterbury, Wests and Balmain, he also led a double life off the pitch as a career criminal.
After serving an eighteen-month sentence in Long Bay Goal at the age of sixteen, in his life away from football he became a part of the seamy Sydney underworld, working as a standover man and enforcer, and orchestrating illegal bookmaking rings.
Loved by his friends and feared by his enemies, John Elias life story is one of the most colourful in Australian sport, as he careered between league at the highest level, and long years in jail for crimes as various as gun and drug dealing and the shooting of a hated rival.
Sin Bin is John's incredible story. You'll never look at John Elias, or Rugby League, the same way again.