The Welsh Rugby Union is using the Lions captain Sam Warburton to spearhead an anti-drugs campaign after a survey revealed a significant proportion of athletes on UK Anti-Doping’s banned list are from the two rugby codes in Wales.
The message from Warburton, Wales’s captain since 2011, is that he is proof players do not have to cheat to reach the top and in a video on the WRU’s website, he urges anyone who knows about drugs cheats should report them “to protect our sport and help keep it clean”.
The survey was conducted by BBC Wales’s Week In Week Out programme that was broadcast on Tuesday night in which an unnamed former semi-professional player claimed the taking of performance-enhancing drugs at the level beneath the professional game is rife. Players look to take short cuts to bulk up and help them reach the top. They are not bothered about drug-testing because it is done on an infrequent basis and many substances pass through the body quickly.
The programme came a week after two players, Merthyr’s Owen Morgan and Glynneath’s Greg Roberts were banned for four and two years respectively after failing tests. Last year, the former Swansea prop Dean Colclough received an eight-year suspension for trafficking prohibited substances.
The WRU has long battled against the taking of performance-enhancing drugs. In 1990, the Wales B centre Richie Griffiths became the first rugby player in the world to be caught taking anabolic steroids after testing positive following a league match between South Wales and Aberavon and six years later, the Llanelli second-row Paul Jones was banned for two years after injecting testosterone.
It was a time when random testing started and there were anecdotal reports of players leaping over walls at training grounds and fleeing after testers turned up unannounced. Some were prepared to talk about the issue privately and a common theme was the ready availability of banned substances at local gyms.
In 2003, the entire Penygraig squad was banned after refusing to take drugs tests following a local final against Pontypridd and a survey in 2009 showed that in the previous six years, 36 Welsh players, including two women, had been tested positive for banned substances.
“There is no place for doping in sport and it certainly does not fit in with the values of rugby union,” said the WRU chief executive, Martyn Phillips, this week. “The recent bans serve as a strong warning to everyone in the game that non-compliance with anti-doping rules carries grave consequences.
“We work closely with UK Anti-Doping and fully adhere to the World Anti-Doping Code. There is no room in the code for carelessness or not knowing, and players are encouraged to check the prohibited lists. We want to rid our game of these practices.
“It’s a problem in society to start with. The challenge for us, not just in rugby but in sport generally, is to try to get it out of the game. I don’t think that’s going to be easy and the fact that we’ve caught people suggests there’s an issue. My job now is to get closer to that and to make sure we just become the best we can be to try and remove the problem.”
This year, the ban for taking steroids and growth hormones was increased from two to four years but players continuing to be caught in the same numbers suggests that the greatest deterrent is getting caught, not the punishment for cheating.
“Our primary focus remains on taking a preventative approach to doping by working to eradicate the source of the problem,” said Nicole Sapstead, UK Anti-Doping’s chief executive. “We do this in partnership with sporting governing bodies and at the same time we continue to develop links with a wide range of law enforcement partners to combat the production and supply of these substances. In doing so we are protecting sport and helping to curb the increasingly worrying trend of steroid abuse by young men. In an ideal world we’d be testing all sports all the time but that’s not a reality for any anti-doping organisation in the world. If people really want to cheat the system they’ll find a way.”
