Drugs in School Sport

 

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.