Rugby’s growing crisis

As the step-father of two teenage boys, I find the current furore over the use of steroids by school rugby players rather alarming.

For me, as a parental figure, it worries me that our two boys could quite possibly be taking some kind of steroids. What I do know is that they take protein shakes to boost their training in the gym. Are they taking steroids? I don’t think so, but unless they manifested the stereotypical signs . . .  ie pimply skin, sudden radical growth, aggression, how would I know? There are plenty opportunities for young men or women to take steroids if they were hell-bent on it.

Fortunately, neither D or K have bulked up into Shrek-like proportions overnight, so I hope that the coast is clear.

Who’s to blame for the mess? The schools? The gyms and trainers who may have an interest in a lucrative drug dealing sideline? The coaches or parents who pressure their kids to want to be superhuman athletes . . . the kids themselves? It’s easy to generalise, but hard to pinpoint exactly where the rot sets in.

From a sporting perspective it’s thoroughly dishonest. In rugby – where the main problem clearly lies – it’s meant to be 15 men against 15 men (or women in the case of women’s rugby) and may the best team win. It’s a tough, aggressive sport, for sure, but it should also be fair.

Eggflips

Were there steroids back in the day when I played rugby? Yes there were, but I never once heard of a schoolboy rugby player taking steroids to enhance his performance level. Eggflips and gym sessions were the path to muscle growth and strength training, if there were cases of abuse I never heard of it.

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The most alarming thing about all this is that there are thousands and thousands of young school and club rugby players, some at primary school level, who love the game and aspire to do great things in rugby one day. If this is the level of pressure and prestige associated with the game now – that kids will do anything to get ahead – what will it be like in 10 years’ time when they are in matric?

Time to weed out school rugby drug cheats

It has emerged that the South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport wants permission from all schools in the country to test schoolchildren as often as possible for illegal performance-enhancing drugs. This comes after the revelation of a huge increase in schoolboy rugby players using illegal anabolic steroids.

Independent Online reports that tests conducted by Joburg company Drug Detection International on pupils at 18 of the country’s top schools found 21 out of 130 pupils – almost one in six – tested positive for illegal steroids.

TimesLive named the schools involved and reported that government was considering changing legislation to allow testing of schoolchildren in certain sports including swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby. Some of the pupils were allegedly found with steroids in their possession.

See the reports here: School steroid blitz
School rugby rocked by steroids scandal

Am I a fan of school rugby? Of course, you don’t find better running rugby anywhere, but I’m not interested in a Tour de Farce like situation, where you don’t know who’s on the “juice” and who isn’t? Plus, we’re talking about young people’s lives and health here.

In closing, let’s have a look at the definition of “sportsman” (The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Seventh Edition): “Person fond of sports, esp, of hunting etc; person who behaves fairly and generously, hence like a sportsman.”

Do the goings on in schoolboy rugby bear any resemblance to this definition? Not at all I’d say, somewhere along the way, we’ve lost the plot. Today it’s all about rising to the top of the pile . . . any way you can and no matter the cost.

***Not his real name.