RUGBY:Steve Morris
THE one surprising aspect of the positive dope tests on several top players is that anyone should be surprised by them having turned up. Northern Transvaal’s Springbok lock Johan Ackermann and the Gauteng Lions pair Bennie Nortje and Stefan Bronkhorst tested positive earlier in the season and now a specimen from Northerns prop Frikkie Bosman has turned the modern variation of litmus paper the wrong colour.
Ackermann, Nortje and Bronkhorst have been caught in the limbo between the righteous demands of the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) that they appear unrepresented to answer charges as the Sarfu constitution demands, and the rightful dictates of our new Constitution which guarantees legal representation in all cases where a person’s livelihood and reputation are at issue.
In Bosman’s case, the waters are muddied by the need for a new clause in the Sarfu constitution and the fact that the trio who were accused before him have still to be summoned to speak to the authorities.
It must also be added that all four have a case for claiming that they have been found guilty before all the facts have been put forward simply because they have been publicly named.
One thing is certain, though. Drug-taking in sport is not going to go away. And there are going to be even more players hauled up before the magistrates of the game. It is an indictment of the pressures on these players to keep performing rather than on the naivety of the young men themselves in believing that they could get away with it.
This is not to make excuses. Like the sneak punch, the stud mark on the side of the head or even hanging offside, the practice is illegal under the multitudinous and muddled laws of the game.
But that said, the testing is a random and – so it would seem – half-hearted affair.
It is an open secret that many of the world’s top players – and not just South Africans – have resorted to performance- enhancing drugs to stay with the rest of the pack.
The underlying reason for pumping dubious substances into one’s body is not hard to fathom. Rugby is a very hard and extremely physical sport. It exacts a huge toll on the men who play it at top competitive level and injury is a constant companion.
Steroids and their more dangerous cortiso- steroid derivatives, offer a player three inter-related advantages; the ability to train beyond the normal, natural boundaries the human physique and metabolism sets, a sharp increase in muscle bulk and the accompanying strength, and the ability to train through – and out of – a period of injury.
The verdict is still out on the lasting effects of steroids. It is known, though, that the chubby-cheeked user’s symptom called “moonface” is not hard to spot. Look around you.
And those sudden increases in jersey size do not always come from years of toil in the gym.
But if the drugs are dangerous, the monetary rewards are great in the current era of professionalism.The downside is equally vast: a loss of contract and prestige.
Small wonder then that a player on the brink of becoming a team regular would take the risks to make a grab for glory, or one who has lost his place to injury would chance being branded a cheat for trying to regain what was lately his.
It is an extremely difficult area to both legislate and control. Athletics has found this to be so, but the sport has pursued the drug-takers relentlessly.
The same thorougness needs to be applied in rugby. It would doubtless lead to a spate of retirements – for anyone who thinks that the use of steroids is not widespread is deluding himself – and surely throw some more big names into the hat. But it would, in the long-term, stop the majority of players from even contemplating steroids as an alternative.
Do it properly and none of the cheats will escape the web and the current unpleasant mess will not have to become a norm.