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Recently I met up with one of my former rugby opponents and was startled to hear how easily he’d taken steroids while playing club rugby in Australia in the early 2000s. He wasn’t proud of it but believed it was rampant at certain clubs in Queensland.
It’s no secret that the game is bigger and faster now but it begs the question: How many are on the ‘gear’?
Customs seizures of steroids have doubled in the last year and are five times what they were in 2005.
So obviously the trend is for artificial gains, whether it is for bodybuilding or sports dominated by strength, speed and power.
Sunshine Coast Stingrays player Francis Bourke got a four-year ban for importing growth hormone but this was thanks to border control, rather than any testing by the Australian Anti-Doping Authority, ASADA.
How many Francis Bourkes are looking to make that leap to full professional with the aid of drugs?
How much testing is actually done for our code? Can we have confidence that our players are all possessing amazing natural ability? Does ASADA do much outside the Olympic sports?
Do the officials just turn a blind eye to off-season recuperation and blatant use at the next tier down? What role does the IRB play?
According to the IRB’s keeprugbyclean.com they carried out 1714 tests worldwide in 2011 (hardly a large number when you consider 989 of these were carried out at the World Cup). Of these, there were only nine adverse findings and five violations.
Given there are 1.1 million senior players in England alone, one wonders if rugby would look as bad as cycling if more tests were actually carried out in the ranks below Internationals.
Chris Lewis’s well-researched Roar article of a few days ago highlights the issue of poor national programs of drug-testing and how ASADA hasn’t produced sport-specific reports since 2005-06.
Also the fact that many of these drugs clear your system within 72 hours means that you could quite confidently take them all season if you know that you’re only likely to be tested on a weekend game.
While I’d love to assume that the rugby union and league stars of today got there by hard work and natural talent, unless there is greater transparency as to the level of testing done in all competitions, one is inclined to be suspicious of the how they got there.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.