12
Drugs
THE
TALLEST people on Earth are the Dutch. Google it and you’ll see that the
average height of the men in Holland is six feet (1,82m) and the women five
feet seven inches (1,7m).
Just why
that should be is a fascinating study all on its own. Without going into the
whole nature vs nurture debate just yet, the reason seems to lie in both.
Tallness is genetic, and a tall man and a tall woman are likely to produce tall
offspring. But it could also be environmental, something to do with the greater
calcium intake of living in Holland, a country where dairy farming is the main
agricultural activity, combined with living at below sea level and, therefore,
constantly breathing air that is rich in oxygen.
Whatever
the reason, dutchmen are big, and so are their descendants who inhabit our part
of the world, the Afrikaners. They, for all sorts of reasons, never much went
in for diversification of the gene pool, tending to marry within their language
and religious affiliations – in the past anyway.
So, it’s
not surprising that white South African rugby players – forwards particularly –
are regarded as the biggest in the game.
Size
counts on the rugby field. Sure, it’s not the only thing that counts and
players like Cheslin Kolbe, with his particular skills and abilities, are often
the difference between winning and losing. No-one, however can expect a team of
15 Cheslin Kolbes to compete with a side that has eight giant Afrikaners up
front.
I’m generalising,
of course, you find big men everywhere in the world and I know some Afrikaners
who are positively titchy. But go look at the forwards in the rugby teams at
the top Afrikaans schools and you’ll see what I mean.
At school
rugby level, where different rates of growth between individuals are a factor
and where matches are played between players of the same age (or who are
supposed to be, anyway), the size of the players plays a significant role. Big
boys are more effective in the more formalised tight phases of the game, and
they are more difficult to tackle when they run with the ball. The big boys are
also the first ones chosen when teams are selected, so they are always more likely to be in the A teams, the talented
players programmes, and later in the provincial squads, therefore, they get the
better, more specialised, coaching from an early age.
All of
which means that to be a good rugby player, you need to be big. And in a
playing population where everyone is big anyway, you have to be even bigger.
The
traditional South African playing style, according the stereotype, is based on
forward domination, aggressive tackling and physical intimidation. That’s not
altogether true of course but you could argue that the 2019 World Cup win was
built on those foundations. That style of play needs big men and the 2019
Springboks were big.
The
success of that style of play extends all the way down to the youngest levels.
In fact, it’s at its most effective in the lowest age groups where the size
differential can sometimes be quite frightening. Getting the ball to the big
boy who steamrolls the defence and scores, is often the only pattern of play at
that age level.
Combine
that with the attitude that winning, by any means, is the most important thing
and you can see why size has become so important. It all leads, inevitably, to
the realisation that to be successful at the game you have to be big. And given
the importance attached to winning, and the doors of opportunity that are
opened to successful young rugby players, dodgy methods are sometimes used to
make players big enough. That often involves the use of chemical substances to
build muscle and bulk, and drugs to enhance performance.
Players
have been getting away with this ever since it was discovered that you can
ingest certain things that can help you to bulk up, and others that can make
you stronger. Tests to detect those substances were developed and they are now
being more regularly conducted, resulting in more and more players being
caught. There have been some widely publicised cases of top international
players being tested positive for illegal substances. There’s an ongoing dance
between the creators of those drugs and those who are trying to detect them in
players, with advances in testing techniques invariably being followed by
substances that are easier to conceal, being formulated.
The school
rugby scene in South Africa is, sadly, not immune to all of this. It’s been
going on for a long time and, apparently, it’s pretty widespread. It’s been 30
years since I was actively involved in coaching schoolboy rugby but I remember,
even then, quite a number of instances where players (including one or two in
my own school) suddenly became markedly bigger and stronger in a short period
of time. It was often put down to a sudden growth spurt, or to a change in
training regimen, but I realise now that we were pretty naïve.
In some
cases several players, or even entire teams, turned into ripped musclemen
almost overnight. They won more games of course, and the stories, although
never substantiated, that followed told of steroid-use being encouraged, or
even administered by the coaches themselves. At best, it was believed that
certain parents who were over-ambitious about the performance of their children
supplied the dope. Alternatively, it was suggested that the body builders at
the gyms that those players trained at were their dealers.
Using
substances to bulk up is a grey area, legally. Pharmacies and sports goods
dealers do a brisk trade in all sorts of meal replacements and dietary products
that they claim will help with weight gain. They were designed to help
weightlifters and body builders who were working towards getting themselves to
look a certain way. The problem is that those substances are classified as
nutritional supplements, not as medicines, and they are therefore not regulated
by the relevant authorities.
While most
of them may well be manufactured under strictly controlled conditions and their
labelling may be accurate, there’s no guarantee that they do contain what they
say they do. Their marketing is dependent on the results that users get, so
it’s entirely probable that something might be slipped into the formula to help
the process, and what that is isn’t included in the list of ingredients on the
product label.
That fact
that many of these supplements are manufactured by the same pharmaceutical
companies that make the controlled substances makes it possible that something
illegal might get into the mix, even by mistake. Many professional sportspeople
who have tested positive for banned substances have blamed it on the
nutritional substances that they take, claiming that the illegal ingredients
were never declared by the manufacturers. They could be right.
Then there
are the side-effects. While it may be safe to use the supplement, according to
its directions, for a limited period of time, excessive use and overdosage is –
as with anything – dangerous. There are studies that indicate that there could
be health issues. Kidney and liver damage, dehydration and undesired weight
gain are some of those.
Schools
have a duty to protect their learners from harm. That includes preventing them
from using substances that are not good for them. Accordingly, a number of
South African schools have been conducting voluntary drug test for some time
now. They have to be voluntary because only parents have the right to authorise
the administration of medical procedures on minors. The school does not have
the authority to order a player to undergo a test, neither do the rugby
authorities. That immediately presents a problem. If testing is not compulsory,
then those who have reason to fear being tested are not going to volunteer to
be tested.
The
Association of State Boys’ Schools that I referred to earlier has an agreement
that their rugby teams are available for random voluntary testing, which means
those schools will not play against opponents who refuse to subject themselves
to it. It’s not perfect, but the randomness factor is a strong disincentive.
And those
voluntary tests have yielded results. A report in a Sunday newspaper a few
years ago got people excited. The results of a survey conducted in schools was
called “shocking revelation”.
What
happened was that a few of the schools who had been running testing programmes
admitted that a handful of pupils had tested positive for performance enhancing
substances. This was extrapolated to indicate widespread abuse by schoolboy
rugby players, in particular. There were stories flying around of entire teams
and even whole rugby sections in some schools indulging in the practice.
The report
spoke of 21 pupils testing positive, out of 130 tested at 18 schools. Of the
schools named in the report only two were state schools. It wasn’t anything
new, so there were really no “shocking new revelations”. There have been, as I
said, allegations of doping in schools for over 30 years now.
The 18
schools who participated in the survey were mainly private schools, and as far
as I can tell, all of them were English medium. There’s a reason why there was
only 18 of them. It’s not that easy to do the testing. A cost figure of
R1 500 per test was quoted in the article. And testing cannot be conducted
without parental consent – we are dealing with minors, remember. The schools
that participated in the testing programme clearly obtained that consent and
they all had policies in place that made testing mandatory, and they all got
their parents to accept that.
Other
schools said, according to the article, that they are still busy putting
policies and procedures in place.
The cost
of testing means that it only ever be done on a random basis. This is the
practice even at the Olympic Games and random means you cannot choose who you
take a sample from. So many innocents will be tested and many guilty ones will
go free.
The biggest
problem, though, is what do you do when you do catch someone using. South
African Institute for Drug-free Sport chairman Shuaib Manjra said on the radio
at the time that there is no legislation covering schoolboy offenders. The SA
Rugby Union (Saru) has a policy dealing with senior players, but not for
juniors.
In any
event, according to the report, some of the offenders are not sportsmen, they
take substances to improve their body image in the gyms.
And, as in
all cases involving drugs, it’s no good going after the addicts, you need to
find the dealers and the shady operators who are behind them. And in the case
of schoolboys that’s complicated because coaches have been accused of
encouraging the practice and, given the size of schoolboy rugby players these
days, it’s inconceivable that mothers and fathers don’t know there’s something
going on.
So, where
do we go from here? Given that a win at all costs approach is acceptable in
many cases, it’s true to say that substance abuse is another symptom of the
wider malaise of an unhealthy approach to sport. Winning has become too
important and, in the case of schools rugby in particular, it has taken on a
significance way beyond the original intentions of sport as part of the
educational curriculum. Winning has become part of the value system and people
have always done whatever was necessary to fight for their values.
That’s why
there’s nothing new or shocking about the findings of that survey. And until we
change those values, testing programmes aren’t really going to help.
There’s
been a lot of publicity given to positive test results at the under-18 Craven
Week. Although schools retain the final authority (on behalf of parents) over
all schoolboy rugby players, the Craven Week is different because it’s an interprovincial
event, organised by Saru. Making yourself available for selection is entirely
voluntary and the parents of those who attend the week have to agree to the
possibility of them being drug tested. If they don’t, their child won’t be picked.
So testing
is, in a way, compulsory, and it is definitely going to happen, every year.
You’d think that that would stop players from taking steroids and running the
risk of being caught. But it doesn’t. At the 2018 Craven Week six players
tested positive for anabolic steroids. The annual report of Saids revealed
those numbers and added that there were three positive tests at the Craven Week
in 2014, four in 2015 and three in 2017.
That any
players at all should have been caught is appalling, but those numbers hardly
warrant the headline of a report on the BBC Sport Website in 2019 which read: Steroids
at 16: South Africa’s rugby scene faces a widespread doping problem. The
article dredged up some positive tests results from 2012, and spoke about some
Springboks, including Chiliboy Ralepelle, Aphiwe Diyanti and Gerbrand Grobler,
who had tested positive.
Then it
attempted to tie the whole bundle, together with a picture of the 2019
Springboks posing topless and showing off their - admittedly, unbelievably
ripped torsos - to a widespread doping problem in SA rugby.
The author
didn’t really make his point very convincingly and it seemed his real
motivation was to diminish, through allegations of steroid use, South Africa’s
2019 World Cup triumph over England. The article does, however, highlight the
reasons why some schoolboy players are tempted to go this route. Professor Jon
Patricios of Wits University’s faculty of medicine is quoted, as is
Supersport’s communications manager, Clinton Van der Berg.
“A lot of
it is pressure that builds in making an elite sports team or making the first
XV rugby team,” Patricios is quoted as saying. “There are cases where coaches
will tell players they need to pick up 10kg before the start of the season if
they want to make the team.” He adds that he believes there are coaches and
headmasters who are turning a blind eye to the practice.
Van der
Berg, according to the article, said that, anecdotally, it is happening all
over schoolboy rugby. “There is a demographic of schoolboy whose great ambition
is to become a professional rugby player and there are absurd amounts for
contracts,” he is reported as saying. “Even if that doesn’t happen there is the
possibility of being poached by another school, were the bursary system would
see your fees being paid. There is an enormous incentive to excel – to be
faster, bigger, stronger, better.”
Van der
Berg’s latter point is well taken and it ties into the issue of recruitment.
Talented players from impoverished backgrounds can have their lives changed by
being identified and offered spots at top rugby schools. It’s been shown that
some of them will, out of desperation, do whatever it takes to make that
happen. Some have already been caught lying about their age. It’s highly likely
that others will take performance enhancing drugs to make themselves bigger and
more likely to stand out.
That those
players are then signed up by recruiters who have to be suspicious, at the
least, of the size of some of them. That they are “signed up” anyway is a
further blot on the reputations of schools that follow these practices and
another indictment of the win-at-all costs philosophy in schools rugby and the
professionalisation of the game that has resulted from it.
To be
clear, I’m not saying that substance abuse happens at all schools. Neither am I
implying that development of strength and weight gain cannot happen without the
use of illegal performance enhancing substances.
Superior physical conditioning plays a
major role in sporting success and it is done very well, and legally, at the
best schools. That’s why the professionalisation of sport is not always a bad
thing.
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