What a week for sport and all of us who love it. Certainly it was the major topic of questioning for me, from my local bowling club to footy fans I bumped into in the street.
Can these accusations of corruption and drug use be fair dinkum, or is it just some big political stunt?
Are the drug agency people trying to justify their existence and the massive dollars spent to catch the cheats already?
It will be a very disruptive factor for season 2013, and for some clubs more than others. Hope it’s not your club but more so hope it has the affect the authorities say they want – ridding the game of cheats or illegal profiteers through betting. Surely we all want that.
From the coaching point of view, I would like to make a couple of points I think others may be interested in.
I agree strongly with coaches and CEOs being called into question about what is going on in your club.
I also understand fully it is nearly impossible for those highly responsible men to have a complete understanding of the super-standard required to know everything is at best-practice level.
Knowing includes so much – is the nutrition and supplementation plan for the club offering the best legitimate recovery and growth opportunities for your players, or is it breaking the rules? You need to know if it is even bending the rules.
And that is only what is happening within the fences and walls of your club. Are players actually buying into your best-practice, properly controlled programme, or are they following the radical and possibly illegal opportunities of some dude who has befriended these largely impressionable young men?
It’s not easy to know everything, so it requires lots of great communication between the top positions, all other associated staff, and senior players. This communication is at its most efficient when it extends all the way to great relationships between everyone from rookie to club chairman. Without it, the risk of poor outcomes increases manifold.
It diminishes with a recruitment system that does not welcome in high risk characters – their legacy stays when they leave and it will take years to eradicate the harmful attitudes and behaviours developed in their time in your club.
Fortunately for me I have two sons, highly educated and now fairly experienced in this field. Their advice and knowledge-sharing has opened my eyes to so much.
Firstly, there’s what I think almost certainly happened when I look back on the early and middle parts of my own coaching career. The pressure to succeed has always been immense and looking for the edge is a prerequisite. But for young men feeling those same pressures, it has also been difficult to find the right words.
Some players must have felt the pressure to look for other ways after I told them they needed to get bigger, stronger, or faster and that “the clock is ticking mate.”
I had a wake-up call about this in my time at Parramatta. A rival club’s new wonder boy was carving up the comp in the front row with almost superhuman efforts week on week. This guy had been a run-of-the-mill reserve grader for a couple of seasons but now he was selected for State of Origin!
I went to the SFS to watch him and only him and my eyes nearly popped. The following day I called a meeting with staff and all the front rowers explaining fully what I had seen and what was now to become the standard required at Parra.
As you will have guessed by now, within a short time the wonder guy was done for prohibited drug use. To his everlasting credit, Dean Pay gave me one of those knowing looks with not much smile at our first contact after the news arrived of just how this guy had delivered that level of performance. He had already told me of his very strong views on those who took short cuts.
I chose to change my hastily acquired standards in future, and certainly to change my word usage about the need to improve physically.
Awkwardly, here I will also mention that the adjustment may not have been strong enough. A pretty fair player who fitted the ‘before’ photo in a body building mag left my club as we did not think he would get “the rig necessary to cut it in the NRL”. To our surprise he bobbed up at another club just a couple of seasons later looking like the ‘after’ photo!
He has absolutely carved it and is now one of the top line in our sport. Did he cheat to get there? I have no proof. Perhaps the latest big investigation will uncover the validity of these types of accusations or innuendos to clear that player or condemn those who have taken the short cut.
As Deano pointed out to me at the time, when some others had been penalised with suspension over drug cheating, the penalty is not enough. Why go to all this expense and time for such limited penalties?
Some of those guys who were caught way back in time made massive changes to their bodies, kept those benefits and in some cases improved them while suspended and walked back into the game ready to rumble with all intact. That seems like not enough penalty to me.
Others have gained exemptions or amendments to their testing requirements citing medical conditions as reason. This has been pointed out to me as a case of ‘too bad’ for them.
If you have a medical condition that requires a substance banned as a performance enhancer, perhaps you should try another profession. It seemed too convenient in more than one case brought to my attention.
These, it should be said, are the only incidents I have had cause for concern about in a period since 1984.
Conversely I can’t understand why, if the authorities have plenty of info across a wide range of sports about illegal drug use, they have not outed the cheats already?
I am sure the clubs involved would have acted immediately if that information had been forwarded to them instead of continuing to pay players doing the wrong thing while info was withheld. Isn’t that what the sports and the clubs are paying for when they employ the drug testers?
Through the education of my sons I am able to say there is a much better way that players and clubs can go without all the supplementation and associated health risks that may be linked in later life to their usage and certainly nowhere near breaking rules. The natural, healthy way to high performance.
More about that next time and more also about the health and drug plague in sports not even mentioned in all that’s been written and said in recent days.
dasilva
Guest
It's not about whether they can play it within the week. If you have a blood transfusion that is doping but he doesn't believe people used to treat legitimate medical condition should be barred from sport. Blood transfusion is banned anytime outside competition unless you have The article is suggesting getting rid of therapeutic exemptions in sport that if you have a medical conditions that require use of drugs you can't play professional sport. Hence if someone had an accident that requires blood transfusion, they should kicked out of the sport permanently If you take this criteria hardly anyone would be elegible to play professional sports. I'm quite sure large proportion of asthmatic in our olympic team (in fact it was commented on that our large proportion of asthmatic would affect our ). Leo Messi took growth hormones when he was growing up as he had growth hormones deficiency as a child. Are you saying the game would be better off if he was kicked out of the game? I don't think the author quite understand how many people would be affected by this and I'm quite sure it would be illegal to bar someone from playing sport because they take medication to treat a legitimate illness Let's remember here, a lot of these PED are used to elevate levels above normal. Blood doping is used to elevate blood cells and hence oxygen carrying capacity above normal levels for an advantage. Someone using it for medical treatment (let say anaemia or blood loss haemorrhage or GIT bleeding) are restoring the blood cells to normal. Why should those people be barred from sport permanently? Leo Messi had less growth hormones than a normal person due to his medical condition when he was a child and he was given growth hormones so that his level was the same as a normal person. Why should they be barred when there is no unfair advantage/
sunshine
Guest
IF an NRL player is in a serious enough car accident to need a blood transfusion and is well enough to play a game within a week where the transfusion could be of benefit. Then we should also test to see if they have an allergies to kryptonite.
Jimbo Jones
Guest
Would this by any chance be a player at one of the 'beach' clubs?
yewonk
Guest
yes i have guesses
Bazzio
Roar Guru
Well, Smiffy ~ I have a very close acquaintance who trialled for Cronulla 1st grade when Jack Gibson was coaching there. Jack told him he was pretty good, but to come back when he was 'bigger' (*wink). And that's just what this guy did the next year, but in his very first 1st grade trial match he blew out both anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments along with medial and lateral collateral ligaments in one knee. That game was the start and finish of his ARL career. This guy is a huge man, whose individual thighs are the size of my chest girth. How many NRL players are there built like that going around now? ~ Too many! I reckon there's not one coach involved in contact sport who is genuinely surprised with any of the ACC findings.
Wobbly
Guest
@turbodewd: I think the Rabbits Warren on-air gambling lobby promotion was the moment the writing was on the wall. Insidious tentacles of gambling have rugby league completely entrapped.
Wobbly
Guest
Its pretty obvious that the 'busted prop' is Rodney Howe and the current top line player use to be a fairly medium sized lock.
Jay
Guest
Nice work on getting this article quoted in SMH.
YaThink
Guest
Geeeeez there has to be something to the story of doping in NRL, even without Smith's comments, there have always been shady characters latching on to both the clubs & players :( On a different note, any guesses who Brian Smith is referring to as "now one of the top line in our sport" who he suspects is juiced up?
dasilva
Guest
"If you have a medical condition that requires a substance banned as a performance enhancer, perhaps you should try another profession. It seemed too convenient in more than one case brought to my attention. " So diabetics (insulin), asthmatic (salbutamol, inhaled corticosteroids) should be forbidden to play sports?/ If you have a life threatening asthma attack you have to take oral or IV steroids (prednisolone) to survive and that is a PED and is given exemptions from the WADA code. What about people who have car accident and had to get blood infusions to survive after losing blood? Blood infusions is considered doping when it's done on a healthy person. People with anaemia (including people with cancer) who had to take EPO to treat the condition and restore their blood back to normal. Seriously that's just a bad statement and rules out so many athletes in playing professional sport.
turbodewd
Guest
Brian, I would much rather hear your stance on gambling and the potential for match-fixing. In 2010 we had the Ryan Tandy affair. We've also had Nathan Hindmarsh and Ray Warren admit theyve lost huge sums to gambling. Now in light of this the NRL has INCREASED its reliance on gambling. Gambling leads to misery. The NRL is teaching us that gambling culture and the game itself are now part of the same culture - interlinked! You punt on the game DURING the game and then go back to the relevant club for a drink or 7 whilst sitting in front of those IQ-increasing pokies. Im not yet aware of any rugby league identity to hold an opinion strongly against gambling.