Football doping

[24hoursfromtulsehill]

Apparently we were sanctioned for interfering with the testing process. Anyone know anything more about that? (Apologies if there's already a 10-page thread about it.)

 

 

 

Why English game may face far worse doping problem than it yet realises

Oliver Kay | Chief Football Correspondent

April 5 2016, 1:01am,

The Times

Edgar Davids, who ended his playing career at Barnet after stints with Crystal Palace and Tottenham, tested positive for nandrolone while at Juventus in 2001

 

A straw poll of seven footballers, two of them recently retired, throws up some interesting results. Two of them suspect that there are footballers in England who take performance-enhancing drugs and get away with it. The first admits that it is “just a hunch” and suspects we are talking about a tiny minority of isolated cases, away from the mainstream. The second says he suspected a former team-mate, now long retired, but that he never saw any evidence of wrongdoing.

 

Why was the former team-mate suspected? “He used to use a doctor back in his own country,” the player says. “One week he would be sluggish on the training pitch, not lifting a leg. The next week he would be buzzing and you couldn’t get near him. This would happen two or three times a season. He would go on international breaks and we would ask him if he could get us some of his pills — joking — and he would laugh along with it. To this day, I honestly don’t know if he did or not. It wouldn’t surprise me. You could probably get away with it in those days.”

 

Quite possibly, you still could. The FA’s anti-doping testing programme is far more rigorous than ever, but the record number of tests they carried out last season (2,286) sounds rather less cheat-proof when you consider that, across 20 Premier League and 72 Football League clubs, plus more in the National League and the Women’s Super League, it equates — at a stretch — to about one test per player per season for those not involved in European and international competition. “And don’t forget there are some players who are tested a lot more than once,” one player says, “which means there are some who don’t get tested at all.”

 

Does any of this mean English football might have a “hidden” doping problem? No, but it means that when aspersions are cast — whether widely, as with Arsène Wenger’s recent claims that Arsenal have played against “many teams” who used performance-enhancing drugs, or more directly, as with the claims from Dr Mark Bonar to undercover reporters from The Sunday Times that he had prescribed performance-enhancing drugs to players from three different Premier League clubs — the blanket denials that follow cannot be stated with total confidence.

 

“It depends what you class as ‘doping’,” one leading figure in sports medicine says when he is asked whether he believes there is a hidden doping culture in football. “If you’re asking me whether I believe there is a culture of team-sponsored doping programmes, I don’t believe there is, but there are other phenomena, which are unhealthy or unethical. Usually they relate to recovery more than performance-enhancement.”

 

A second doctor casually reels off the names of famous European players and clubs who were suspected of using EPO — erythropoietin, the hormone illegally used by Tour de France cyclists, such as Lance Armstrong, to enable blood to increase lung function during aerobic activity — or nandrolone, which increased red-blood-cell production, in the 1980s and 1990s. Some served punishments, others did not. “It was always felt to be something they did in Italy and Spain before the crackdown happened,” the doctor says. “Maybe I’m naive, but I honestly don’t think it caught on over here.”

 

“The thing about football,” the first doctor says, “is that the underlying performance markers are completely different to cycling, athletics, etc. EPO was used in cycling to get blood to absorb oxygen more quickly, but that was for pure endurance. In athletics, at elite level, it’s all about pure speed or endurance and any marginal gains can be huge; a 1 per cent increase here or there can be the difference between finishing first and finishing nowhere, between getting sponsorship and not. The only equivalent situation in football might be where a player is towards the end of his career, he needs one last contract and he is desperate enough to go outside the club to look for help.

 

“In football you’re probably running a maximum of 12 kilometres in 90 minutes. You are just one of 11 players in a team and the game comes down to a lot more than speed or endurance. The financial rewards are enormous whether you win or not. Why would you jeopardise that for something that might give you a tiny advantage but probably wouldn’t affect the result and might earn you a huge ban? It’s not an ethical consideration, because we all know footballers will try to con a referee, but from a practical point of view, the risk far outweighs the potential reward. In other sports, that equation might not be so straightforward.”

 

A third doctor, no longer involved in football, reinforces the pragmatic viewpoint. “Other sports are one-dimensional,” he says. “They are power sports or endurance sports. Anabolic steroids improve performance in power sports. EPO or blood doping can significantly assist in endurance sports. Football is a combination of other things, including power, speed, agility and endurance. If a player bulks up too much, he loses agility and endurance. I suspect that if a drug became available that would help both aspects (power and endurance), doping would become more of a problem in football. As such, if there isn’t a problem in football, I don’t think it’s due to any noble notion of fairness. It’s just not practical.”

 

None of this is to suggest that football is all sweetness and light, with no dark side. Bonar’s comments, in which he alluded to players at Arsenal, Birmingham City, Chelsea and Leicester City, whether past or present, merit further investigation by the FA and UK Anti-Doping. The FA said that it considered The Sunday Times allegations “very serious”. Far better that than to bury heads in the sand and to follow the mistakes made by other sports, where allegations and claims have been dismissed and ignored until it is far too late.

 

Besides, doctors working in football raise other issues which, they say, are unethical — if not illegal. “The first definition of doping would be the illegal use of substances that are on Wada’s banned list,” one doctor says. “The second definition — from a sports medicine point of view — would be the unethical use of legal substances. There are managers who promote the use of painkilling injections more than they should. There is the abuse of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, even things like paracetamol and Nurofen, and there are clubs who will use vitamin drips, things like that, for the replenishment of fluids. That is not doping per se, but some of it is unethical from a medicine point of view.”

 

Another such recovery technique, legal but frowned upon by some doctors, is “blood-spinning” — whereby a patient’s blood is “spun” in a centrifuge to form platelet-rich plasma (PRP), which can stimulate hormone growth and accelerate recovery. The PRP can then be injected back into the patient in the hope of speeding up the healing process.

 

In 2005, the procedure was banned by Wada, but it was legalised in 2011 due to a “lack of evidence concerning the use of these methods for purposes of performance enhancement”. André Villas-Boas, the former Tottenham Hotspur head coach, now at Zenit St Petersburg, is one of the few managers to have spoken openly about the use of PRP for rehabilitation, but it is increasingly common. Is it ethical? “It’s not to my tastes, but others will have a different view,” one of the doctors says.

 

Certainly sports medicine is a lot more sophisticated these days than around the turn of the century, when the use of syringes, often under overseas managers or doctors, became more commonplace in English football. Paul Merson claimed that at Arsenal “on the eve of big games, we would go to a Holiday Inn in Islington, where a yellow product was injected into our arm”; Wenger says it would have been “multivitamins, magnesium, calcium or vitamin C, like everyone else”. Frank Lampard said that he was uncomfortable when Claudio Ranieri’s medical staff at Chelsea asked him to take injections to boost his iron levels. Gary Neville cited widespread use of injections in the England camp at the 1998 World Cup, which the FA said were simply to “provide natural substances that should be in the players’ food”.

 

“The thing we are always told, as footballers, is to say no to everything,” one player says. “I don’t take a paracetamol at home without speaking to our club doctor first. But if the doctor says you should take something — a tablet, an injection — you do it, no questions asked. Is that right? Are there ‘dodgy’ doctors out there? I don’t know, but I totally trust our doctor.”

 

The FA declined to comment about its testing procedures, but it believes they are more than proportionate. One official says they go “above and beyond” the testing in other sports, some of which have had far more serious doping issues than football.

 

The RFU found five positive tests out of 536 in 2013-14, which equates to one violation per 107 tests, as opposed to football’s record last season of one violation per 254 tests. Four of those five positive tests in rugby union were for performance-enhancing drugs, whereas, of the nine violations found by the FA, six involved social drugs, one was a sanction for a club (Oldham Athletic) for interfering with the testing process and the other two for substances on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (Wada) banned list — Jake Livermore, the Hull City midfielder, for taking cocaine (although not, it was concluded, for reasons of performance-enhancement) and Chey Dunkley, the Oxford United defender, who tested positive for salbutamol after using an inhaler prescribed for his asthma.

 

The number and the scope of tests have increased, as has the access to out-of-competition and home-visit testing. FA procedures do not extend to an “athlete biological passport”, like that introduced by Fifa for the 2014 World Cup, but they are confident that their blood-profiling programme serves the same purpose.

 

Is it enough, though, for English football to smile smugly on the basis that it is clean? Some players suspect not. “I can’t remember the last time I was tested,” one says. “I think it was last season. I’ve only ever had a urine test. Never a blood test.”

 

The FA believes that its testing programme is something to be proud of. If there is a concern that something could be happening, far beyond the reach and the scientific grasp of the testers, the FA does not share it. It would be dangerous, though, to take such things for granted and it would be naive in the extreme to suggest that any resistance to doping can be based on football’s inherent belief in fair play. This is a sport where few players will think twice about conning a referee to get an opponent booked. If — yes, if — football draws the line at doping, it is, above all, a practical consideration.

 

Edited April 5, 2016 by 24hoursfromtulsehill

[blueatheart]

Pardon?

[24hoursfromtulsehill]

Pardon?

Quote in today's Times detailing football club violations. We were sanctioned for interfering with the testing process.

 

For all you egg-chasing Ruperts out there, football infractions are much less frequent than rugby ones. I'll try and cut and paste it later.

[lookersstandandy]

Fictional interpretation of events:

 

WADA, "Hello, we're here to test Andy Gorton, Billy Kenny, Jose Baxter (delete as appropriate).

 

Latics, "Sod off, not here today"

[HarryBosch]

If we were doping at any point in the last 20 years I hope we got a refund....

[HarryBosch]

"We gave them EPO and they still played like they were on IPA"

[deyres42]

"We gave them EPO and they still played like they were on IPA"

Post of the year ?

[JoshOWTB]

If our players have been been doping, they clearly haven't been doing it right.

[leeslover]

This is where Dr Medic states that injecting heroin into your testicle just before kick off can be classed as performance enhancing

[Stevie_J]

Fictional interpretation of events:

 

WADA, "Hello, we're here to test Andy Gorton, Billy Kenny, Jose Baxter, George Green (delete as appropriate).

 

Latics, "Sod off, not here today"

[rosa]

This is where Dr Medic states that injecting heroin into your testicle just before kick off can be classed as performance enhancing

As an opioid analgesic it could potentially be helpful if you were suffering an inguinal hernia, or if you were planning on bollocking the ball into the net like Chris Taylor did in a pre season friendly.

Edited April 5, 2016 by rosa

[HarryBosch]

This is where Dr Medic states that injecting heroin into your testicle just before kick off can be classed as performance enhancing

 

To be fair to the players it's moreso on the coaching & management side that we've had a few numbnuts of late....

[ShakerT]

Think the FA found out Corney had appointed Dazzler and then Dunn, to be fair he needed testing

[L1onheartNew]

If our players have been been doping, they clearly haven't been doing it right.

I beg to differ as Connor Brown is the definition of a football dope

Edited April 5, 2016 by L1onheartNew

[HarryBosch]

So, we're the only club specifically named as being done in the whole article

 

I wonder what actually happened?

[blueatheart]

So, we're the only club specifically named as being done in the whole article

 

I wonder what actually happened?

Can't find anything online.

 

I demand a club statement on this before the end of this hour.

[deyres42]

Anti Oldham media

[L1onheartNew]

There has been a three year investigation, which is still ongoing, into the Essendon Football club over here for regularly administering a banned peptide to players as part of their supplements programme. In total, 34 players received a 12 month suspension which has crippled the club. The coach, James Hird, a :censored: of the highest order, was also suspended. There are strong rumours that then AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou stepped down as a result of allegations during the investigation. To date, unproven. ASADA and WADA were and still are relentless in their pursuit of Essendon. The players were found not guilty by the AFL in 2015, but WADA had the ruling overturned and they were found guilty in January this year by the court of arbitration for sport. There is now an appeal lodged on behalf of the players with the Swiss supreme court.

 

Don't mess with WADA. They make our Ched Evans saga read like the Beano and Dandy

Edited April 5, 2016 by L1onheartNew

[Pine Villains]

anyone who has followed us for any length of time will know how ridiculous these claims are......

[24hoursfromtulsehill]

So, we're the only club specifically named as being done in the whole article

 

I wonder what actually happened?

 

One for the local media to follow up probably.

 

Other clubs and people are mentioned in connection with not-altogether-wholesome practices. There's plenty of helpful hints in there for the keen-eyed. Of course, it might all be a ruse planted by football's powerful clubs to discredit the Leicester Cities of this world.

[HarryBosch]

There has been a three year investigation, which is still ongoing, into the Essendon Football club over here for regularly administering a banned peptide to players as part of their supplements programme. In total, 34 players received a 12 month suspension which has crippled the club. The coach, James Hird, a :censored: of the highest order, was also suspended. There are strong rumours that then AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou stepped down as a result of allegations during the investigation. To date, unproven. ASADA and WADA were and still are relentless in their pursuit of Essendon. The players were found not guilty by the AFL in 2015, but WADA had the ruling overturned and they were found guilty in January this year by the court of arbitration for sport. There is now an appeal lodged on behalf of the players with the Swiss supreme court.

 

Don't mess with WADA. They make our Ched Evans saga read like the Beano and Dandy

 

Have they ever come up against so formidable a foe before though??

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"WADA? I've :censored: 'em!"

[blueatheart]

 

Have they ever come up against so formidable a foe before though??

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"WADA? I've :censored: 'em!"

"We do things proper round here, good day. I SAID GOOD DAY SIR. AND LADY"

[L1onheartNew]

anyone who has followed us for any length of time will know how ridiculous these claims are......

Knowing us, we probably picked up the wrong box...

[beag_teeets]

More likely they couldn't believe our facilities. "You mean we have to sit here waiting for the player to take a piss?"

[lookersstandandy]

More likely they couldn't believe our facilities. "You mean we have to sit here waiting for the player to take a piss?"

 

"Eh, don't complain, until David Dunn put these portakabins in you were behind that tree....."