Sour taste remains over the drugs saga

In a fairly eventful and controversial year, perhaps the biggest hiatus was the drugs saga of last month. Looking back, it now seems something of a 10-day wonder, albeit 10 days that shook the world of Irish rugby.

As things stand, and will surely remain so, we are not too much the wiser. Case A, reputedly involving an Ulster interprovincial player, was dealt with by an IRFU tribunal. What substance the player took, his identity, or the reasons for him being cleared remain a mystery.

Case B, that of Garryowen's Tom Tierney, ran for seven months, at the end of which an independent tribunal recommended that he be reprimanded but beyond that Tierney should not be sanctioned further for what was effectively deemed a naive mistake.

Case C, involving an Irish international player who was tested positive after a Five Nations game in Lansdowne Road last season, uncannily only came to the IRFU's attention two days after Neil Francis's first article in the Sunday Tribune of October 4th. Ultimately, the independent tribunal, after studying a written report submitted by the Irish team doctor Donal O'Shuaghnessy, concluded - with the assistance of their own specialist's examination - that the case was not even worthy of oral hearings and the player was cleared without sanction.

Francis cited O'Shaughnessy's claims that "rugby football in Ireland IS clean" as one of the catalysts for his initial accusations of drug abuse - albeit a two-and-half-year-old quote which had initially been written in the Irish Medical Times but had been reproduced in the Irish Rugby Review recently - along with the death of Florence Griffith-Joyner.

Yet O'Shaughnessy, team doctor to the Irish schools side from 10 years ago and for the last four years to the senior and A squads, stands by that statement.

"Firstly, even though I am the team doctor, all these guys are my patients so therefore the doctor-patient confidentiality relationship exists. I've looked after these guys for 10 years from schools level right up and I can say with hand on heart, to my knowledge, not one of these guys has taken a performance enhancing drug. They wouldn't even know what an anabolic steroid looks like."

O'Shaughnessy stresses that he sees these players both in and out of season, and that he has never seen any of the tell-tale signs which would suggest anabolic steroid abuse.

"I would also like to say that I abhor anyone who takes performance enhancing drugs in any sport and if a person is caught they should be banned for life, no matter what sport they're in.

Referring specifically to Case C, O'Shaughnessy says he "was aware that this squad member was attending a specialist for a legitimate medical condition and was being subscribed legitimate medication.

"If he didn't get this particular medication his illness wasn't going to get any better. I spoke to the specialist he was attending and we agreed that he had to continue with this until his course was finished."

At the time of the player's test "both the squad member and I, in the normal fashion, put down on the testing sheet that he was on this therapeutic medicine for his illness. At no stage did we hide what the guy was taking."

As there was no word from the UK Sports Council for the remainder of the season, O'Shaughnessy presumed they had duly done so.

O'Shaughnessy is still angered over what he calls the administrative "cock-up" across the channel which accounted for the seven-month delay. "I also know from my colleagues in another Home Nations team, that their results went astray as well and they never got theirs until seven or eight months after."

O'Shaughnessy adds: "No-one took account of the anxieties, depression and pressures that the squad member was feeling. I spoke to him every day or every second day. I met him perhaps twice a week to counsel him but the poor guy was devastated because of all the shit that was written in the papers when he knew and I knew that it was for a legitimate reason."

However, the drip feed supplies of information demanded that the media and the public be supplied with more answers than they were being given at the time. Amid the management-by-crisis approach of the IRFU in response to the scandal, the nadir was that press conference of Friday, October 9th at which only then did the third case, that of Tierney, come to light.

In any event, the player's condition has since cleared up. "If he (the Irish squad member) didn't get the medication, to this day he possibly wouldn't be any better. I'm not saying it was a steroid, but it wasn't a performance enhancing drug or an anabolic steroid, and the therapeutic level he was taking was barely above the guidelines set out by the IOC."

With regard to the claim that the player was tested positive for the use of the anabolic steroid norandastrone, a metabolite of nadroline (a version of which was found in Ben Johnson's sample at the Seoul Olympics) O'Shaughnessy says categorically: "that is not true."

In particular, though, O'Shaughnessy disputes the claims made to the Sunday Tribune by an Irish surgeon that he had treated up to 10 rugby players in the last couple of years for the after effects of steroid abuse.

"I do not know of any legitimate surgeon in this country that would operate on a player for anabolic steroids." O'Shaughnessy says he even went so far as to contact a number of Irish surgeons, including one who he knows to have treated players from another sport, and none had treated Irish rugby players.

The Sunday Tribune have still not followed up their own offer to discuss the matter confidentially with the said surgeon, and admit there was a misunderstanding but that contact between the surgeon and the Union should be established after the Christmas holidays.

As regards Cases A and C, O'Shaughnessy admits he had no involvement with them. He concedes that there isn't sufficient substantive evidence, ie drug-testing in Irish rugby both in and out of competition heretofore, to back up his belief that Irish rugby is clean, and that more players may have come into contact with the drug culture in the two-and-a-half years since he made that statement, but stands by it.

"Now, come January 1st when we're in the full testing, again we'll have no problem with that. We would encourage it because it means then that out-of-season testing is going to make the players even more vigilant than they already are. But I know this group in the international squad and I know they would not take anything illegal and I would die for that, because I know them."