Punishment must fit drug-use crime

Business of Sport: The Heineken European Cup kicks off its 10th season this weekend and it's getting bigger and bigger, writes Daire Whelan.

With more TV coverage than ever - Sky are showing six live matches in the opening four rounds while there will also be terrestrial coverage in France and Ireland and Sky Italia will be broadcasting games in Italy - has there ever been a better-branded tournament?

Heineken are synonymous with European club rugby's premier competition and the ERC will have a battle on their hands to get fans away from saying Heineken Cup to European Cup, if, as is expected, they open the competition up to multiple sponsors, as UEFA's Champions League has done.

Heineken, the competition's only sponsors over its 10 years, are in discussions about extending their contract beyond the end of this season, but any new deal is believed to be about £10 million-plus.

"It is the case we are in the market place for a title sponsor," said ERC spokesman Diarmuid Murphy, and with over 800,000 people through rugby ground gates last year for Heineken Cup games and Sky's blanket coverage, there should be no shortage of willing sponsors.

It's all a far cry from one Tuesday night in Romania in 1995, beside the Black Sea, when eventual champions Toulouse beat Farul Constanta 54-10 and the English and Scottish clubs weren't even bothered with the competition.

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Here's a question to ponder: should your career be over if you are caught taking cocaine?

Should your boss be entitled to sack you if he has conclusive proof you have taken the drug once?

Would it be right that after being sacked you were then told you could not be employed for another nine months?

You have to get treatment and counselling but you are not entitled to earn a living until you have seen your sentence out.

Imagine the uproar that would be caused if, say, Ryanair adopted such a policy towards their staff; imagine if Michael O'Leary made it a precondition that all staff were to be drug tested and that any positive tests meant you were banned from any employment - anywhere - for the next six months, minimum.

Your career might not necessarily be over but would certainly be damaged. Your reputation would be muddied and very few other employers would be willing to take you on after your period of punishment was over. And worst of all your employer has the right to stop you from working anywhere else even though your contract has been terminated.

Hard to imagine it happening in the working world isn't it? But once again, despite the best efforts of player organisations, the sports' world still plays to a different tune, outside of normal employment practice.

Just take the case of Adrian Mutu this week. He has tested positive for cocaine. The question now is how much of a ban will the Chelsea player receive and will the London club terminate his contract? But another, more pertinent, question has also arisen in the debate over Mutu's future this week: how can recreational drug-use be classed as performance enhancing?

Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Players' Football Association, has raised the issue this week and at the same time had a go at the World Anti Doping Agency, for in WADA's eyes a positive test is a positive test is a positive test. Black and white with no room for shades of grey.

The only distinction that is made is between out-of-competition testing and in-competition testing, with different penalties for each.

But Taylor's complaint with WADA resides in the fact the world body is still refusing to recognise there is a difference between recreational drug use and performance-enhancing drug use. You may argue both are wrong, but if no direct boost is given to a player's performance through the taking of cocaine, for example, why then should his livelihood be cut off?

Eric Cantona once said of Maradona, "I prefer someone who uses cocaine on a Wednesday and plays at the weekend."

And while Maradona was truly a one-off, the PFA in England do have a code recognising recreational drugs as being different.

Aimed primarily at younger players who may transgress early in their careers, it allows for treatment and counselling to be enough of a penalty and to keep the footballer on track.

Lee Bowyer was such a case when he tested positive for cannabis in 1995 and was not handed a suspension.

While it is doubtful whether Mutu will escape without a ban - after the Rio Ferdinand debacle earlier this year, FIFA are sure to clamp down on any more high-profile drugs cases in England - the PFA will be looking for the minimum, six months, to be handed down, in light of Mutu waiving the testing of his B sample.

We may not have much sympathy for the £60,000-a-week international footballer who, it seems, lived the high life in London to the full, but for sport in general, it's another point in the debate about punishment and possible career-ending bans that are being handed out.

Other sports may complain about the over-stringent drug-testing measures that are being meted out, but for those whose livelihoods are at stake it becomes a much more serious issue.

And it is not the Mutus of this world that the likes of Taylor will be fighting so hard for; it is the players in the lower leagues who, with precedents being followed in this week's high-profile case, will be most affected.

After all, if careers can be ended - as happened with Mark Bosnich, unless one counts Sky One's The Match - at the higher end of the scale, what hope for players struggling on a few hundred euro a week?

In Ireland, we had the Barry Ryan case, the Shamrock Rovers player who tested positive for a banned substance, believed to be recreational, and was given a 15-month suspension, the longest ever given out in Europe in such a case.

It was then reduced to nine months on appeal but in that time Ryan was left to kick his feet around on his own, not even able to play for his local GAA club in Co Clare, as all Irish sports come under the same anti-doping umbrella.

One can understand lengthy bans for athletes testing positive for stimulants and performance enhancers but the whole area of recreational drug use needs to be re-examined by WADA and it is going to be an ongoing battle between Gordon Taylor of the PFA and Dick Pound of WADA.

Part of Pound's reasoning is that these footballers are role models to kids and that one should not be differentiating or even somehow understating the danger of recreational drug use through lighter punishments.

Taylor's argument, however, is that it is more a societal issue, and that in football, like in society as a whole, there are going to be some that will take recreational drugs like cocaine.

The question is whether help for offenders is more important than a suspension.

Both, WADA would say.

But if it was your job and your livelihood that were being stopped would you see it as fair?