Drug testing at the community level

[Phil E]

Do Red Bull shots count?

 

[andyscott]

Do Red Bull shots count?

Only they will make you hyper and make you quick on the whistle and less likely to seem calm

 

[ddjamo]

Spot on.

Steroids are only one example, other performing enhancing banned substances are out there.

name one

 

[andyscott]

name one

Beta 2 agonists
Amphetamines
Various Analgesics.

More?

 

[andyscott]

Androstenedione

various other hormones??

 

[Davet]

Do we need a public shopping list?

 

[ddjamo]

Beta 2 agonists = some/most are legal - provide temp benefits - nothing that will last 80 min
Amphetamines = dehydration - not good for rugby or refereeing. they often act as a diuretic
Various Analgesics = perfectly legal and not performance enhancing

More?

yes - please.

 

[ddjamo]

Androstenedione

various other hormones??

andro? that is hilarious!!! that stuff is weak and it's not even proven if it works. knock yourself out with that one. how about creatine?

are you going through articles and picking out hot topics from the press?

you can keep listing them and the bottom line is nothing takes the place of hard work and diet. the performance enhancement of EPO, transfusions and the like are expensive and impossible to obtain. plus at the olympic levels where a fraction of a second matters it will help.

I challenge you to find anything at all that will enhance performance without hard work in the gym - which again only allows the athlete to train harder and possibly recover better. you don't just take this stuff an hour before your match and you're superman.

 

[Davet]

you don't just take this stuff an hour before your match and you're superman.

Oh - I dunno. Seen players at the Boxing Day game start the second half thinking they're Superman and Batman rolled into one - following the port at half time....

 

[OB..]

Oh - I dunno. Seen players at the Boxing Day game start the second half thinking they're Superman and Batman rolled into one - following the port at half time....

The aim of the RFU's Drug Awareness programme is to ensure players realise that taking drugs of any sort (banned or not, effective or not) without proper advice is potentially dangerous.

 

[Browner]

Bump......... Community level testing

http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/drugs-cheat-rugby-player-banned-for-2-years-1-3829872

 

[Ciaran Trainor]

I would bet there are quite a few at the community level who are on this type of drug.
Seen and known a few over the years.
Just a thought if he's banned from RU could he play RL or any other sport?

 

[L'irlandais]

My 2cents : A flanker at the club, played rugby league for XIII Catalan, before they went professional (in year 2000) as the Catalans Dragons.
To make the squad he felt obliged to to use Anabolic steroids or Peptide hormones or whatever was the rage back then. Now his kidneys are ****ed and he cannot enjoy a beer with the rest of us. One may never be tested for banned substances, that doesn't mean that you won't pay the consequences of drug abuse once your playing days are over. I know he certainly regrets having used, what ever it was he used.

 

[chbg]

Just a thought if he's banned from RU could he play RL or any other sport?

As the article starts:

"An amateur rugby player has been suspended from all sports for two years after failing a drugs test." It is UK Anti Doping (UKAD) who brings charges (and tests athletes/players); Scottish Rugby provided the intelligence of possible wrongdoing.

 

[andyscott]

There are shit loads of players in the community game on steroids and coked off their face from the night before

 

[didds]

the theory of being banned from all sports only works if there is some requirement for amateur clubs to check

1) the bona fides of every new player
2) cross reference that against some central database.

Whether those two occur in every club and every sport in the UK... I really dunno. But I very much doubt it.

didds

 

[FlipFlop]

Since the 2009-10 season there has been over 1200 drugs tests in Scottish Rugby, at all levels of the game, with some 246 in season 2014-15.

Is that all? 1200 tests in the 11/12, 12/13, 13/14 and 14/15 seasons? That is 300 per year on average, (which shows a reduction in the 14/15 season!) Given that there are 2 (?) professional sides, plus the national sides (assume Senior & U20), each with (minimum) 23 players, playing at least 20 games (club) and 5 games (National) - that gives us over 1000 professional players taking to the field, when they could be drugs tested. Ignoring all the amateurs sides. Ignoring out of competition testing.

That is a crazily LOW number of tests.

 

[Taff]

Numbers aren't important, the threat should be enough.

Exactly.

Pick a few random local derbys and a few random players. The chances are that guilty players won't get tested .... but there is a chance that they will.

 

[Camquin]

If SRU do 300 tests and RFU 500 tests per year, what percentage of players will ever be tested?
Assuming they are using test to mean a single athlete - my guess is the vast majority of players will never ever be tested during their playing carreer.

 

[Camquin]

NZRFU apparently tested 170 athletes in 2011. 2 failed.
So every union is getting roughly 1% failure rates.

On the other hand in the USA NCAA reports
"Approximately $4.5 million is invested each year to collect and analyze approximately 13,500 samples through the NCAA’s national drug-testing program, and more than $1.5 million is provided each year to assist drug-education programs at its member colleges and universities."

Now that is a drug testing program.