English Rugby Launches Its Own Drug Testing Programme

 
Authorities insist that every Guinness Premiership player over 18 will be ordered to provide a urine sample. The shockwave started when Matt Stevens, the Bath and England prop, tested positive at the end of 2008 for misuse of drugs has reached a logical conclusion. In future, the contracts signed by professional rugby players in England will include adherence to a new testing policy designed to counteract recreational drugs.
 
The RFU, Premier Rugby Ltd and the Rugby Players’ Association (RPA) announced yesterday what they believe to be a ground-breaking move within the sport, which the International Rugby Board will monitor with interest. Players will be tested for use of cocaine — the substance for which Stevens received a two-year ban that ends in January 2011 — cannabis, amphetamines and ecstasy and those tests will be carried out away from competition.
 
Stevens was caught by a World Anti-Doping Authority (Wada) test for illicit drugs while in competition and Wada policies will carry the heaviest weight. But after the Stevens case was followed by the admission of another Bath player, Justin Harrison, that he had taken cocaine and three other Bath players, Michael Lipman, Alex Crockett and Andrew Higgins, refused to take drug tests, English administrators decided they should fill the gap in Wada policies and test for illicit drugs out of competition.
 
Sanctions for first offenders include a £5,000 fine for senior players (£1,000 for academy players) and an assessment whether treatment is required. A second offence will bring suspension (with 12 months being the entry point), a further fine and public disclosure. The testing programme during the first year aims to cover every player in the Guinness Premiership of 18 or over and it is estimated that more than 1,000 urine tests will be carried out, mainly on club training days.
 
 
“Players fully endorse the policy,” David Barnes, the RPA chairman and Bath prop, said. “We must uphold the image of the game but there has to be confidentiality in the first instance so that players can come forward if they feel they have made a poor choice.”
 
Statistics show that recreational drug use frequently follows alcohol abuse and that the most susceptible group are males aged between 16-24. During a five-year period, between 2004 and 2009, the RFU’s own anti-doping programme, working in competition, caught seven positive tests for illicit drugs including two from the Premiership.
 
Refusal to take a test, or failure to appear for one, will be taken as a first violation but an admission of drug misuse by a player seeking help will not constitute a violation of the new code. There will be a uniform application across the sport to which all Premiership clubs agree, whereas last year in the case of Lipman, Crockett and Higgins, they declined a test requested by their own club; such a situation will not arise in the future.
 
Should a player test positive for the first time, he, his club doctor and the RFU’s head of sports medicine, Simon Kemp, will be the only ones to be informed. “We’re not asking club doctors to behave differently to any other medical issue,” Kemp said in response to questions over whether directors of rugby, involved in team selection, should be made aware of a drug problem. “A player has the right to determine to whom information is disclosed but the policy has been set up to win the trust of the players.
 
“But the programme arises because we think there is an area of potential risk. This is a societal problem. All the evidence suggests it is less common in sport than it is in society and the focus is on rehabilitation which Wada doesn’t do. We are talking about two different landscapes, trying to mesh the two policies together.