Australian winger Wendell Sailor’s lucrative rugby union career will be finished if positive drug tests are confirmed, and he would also be barred from a return to rugby league, reports said on Monday.
In Australian rugby’s biggest drugs scandal, Sailor faces a ban of two years should the B sample return the same result as the A sample which tested positive last week to a recreational drug — widely said to be cocaine.
Should the initial analysis be confirmed, the playing career of Sailor, at 31, would be over. But if the B sample is found to be different, Sailor would be exonerated.
Sailor’s positive drug test could cost him more than Aus$1-million ($770 000), The Daily Telegraph said on Monday.
The paper said any penalty imposed by the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) would lead to a worldwide suspension from rugby and termination of a playing contract worth more than 500 000 Australian dollars a season, due to expire at the end of next year.
Australian rugby league bosses have also vowed to respect the two-year ban the former rugby league international is facing if found guilty.
”When we signed up with Wada [the World Anti-Doping Agency], we agreed to respect the bans of other sports under the same umbrella,” a spokesperson for the National Rugby League (NRL) said.
The spokesperson said that the English Super League was also bound by Wada protocols.
Australian media on Monday condemned Sailor’s behaviour, with one writer declaring that neither the NSW Waratahs nor the Wallabies will touch him after the latest episode.
”He had few friends at the ARU as it was — with most in authority long since sick and tired of his antics,” The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Greg Growden wrote.
”When the ARU lured Wendell Sailor from league ranks five years ago, they readily admitted part of the attraction was his headline-grabbing ability.
”The ARU was so right. It innocently thought this jolly Queensland lug who came over with a bit of baggage could provide so many positive headlines for rugby. How stupid they must now feel, because the Sailor headlines have primarily been horrible.
”You cannot say Sailor has been a great ambassador for the code when his off-field antics have prompted such hideous newspaper splashes as ‘What will they do with a drunken Sailor?’, ‘Sailor sacked over drugs’, and ‘Sailor blows it”’.
Under the headline ”Dopey Dell”, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail said Sailor would be 33 after any two-year ban and a Wallaby or Super 14 comeback would be beyond him.
Andrew Slack, a one-time coach of Sailor at the Queensland Reds, said: ”If these allegations prove to be correct, he’s dead in the water in terms of his rugby career — and that’s a great shame.”
The Herald said Sailor had embarrassed his family and badly let down his teammates at the Waratahs, who lost their chance of hosting a Super 14 semifinal in a 19-14 home loss to the Wellington Hurricanes last Saturday.
”No wonder NSW coach Ewen McKenzie was close to apoplexy when informed on Friday night of Sailor’s positive test, forcing him to make dramatic positional changes for the following evening’s semifinal,” Growden said.
Sailor has been termed a ”serial offender” for a number of off-field misdemeanours over the last 15 months.
He was sent home from the Waratahs’ tour of South Africa in February for an incident outside a Cape Town nightclub. He admitted on that occasion to being drunk, vomiting and pushing a man outside the club. He was fined Aus$4 000 and banned for three Super 14 matches.
He was subsequently stood down from the NSW Waratahs indefinitely for an alleged serious breach of the ARU Code of Conduct.
Last year Sailor was one of three Wallaby players reprimanded over another Cape Town nightclub incident which led to scrum-half Matt Henjak being sent home.
He was then fined Aus$500 for breaching team standards and given a two-match suspended sentence. ‒ AFP
