Doping: Focus now on SA

There is a searchlight that constantly scans the sporting horizon looking for the next doping controversy.

It spends most of its time on cycling and athletics, exposing cheating, cover-ups and the odd national federation corruption.

By extension, other sports, where doping is undoubtedly a problem, are mercifully left in the dark.

However, that searchlight is moving, and there is a real chance that the next sport it settles on is rugby. And, unfortunately, it may be on South Africa that its glare will be brightest.

Last week, promising Stormers lock Gerbrandt Grobler was banned for two years for using the anabolic steroid drostanolone. Two days later, a 16-year-old rugby player at EG Jansen High School was one of two boys arrested after being caught in possession of steroids.

The two cases may not, initially, appear that closely related. One involves a 21-year old talent entering the highest level of the sport, the other a teenager who, apparently, had not yet reached his school's first XV, and was unlikely to continue playing beyond school.

But the two cases hint at why it is South Africa that may become a target of the anti-doping drive.

We are partly responsible for it, because no other country that I'm aware of has done even a vaguely in-depth "audit" of doping in schools; we have.

Glen Hagemann, a sports physician working out of the Sharks Rugby Academy, has produced a couple of surveys looking at doping practices among schoolboys.

The main findings are that it is more prevalent than we'd like to believe - about 10% of boys have admitted to using anabolic steroids.

That's two players, on average, in every 1st XV squad. But, interestingly, the survey revealed that steroid use is less likely to be motivated by performance than aesthetic reasons. Bulking up for appearance is priority number one, and, for a rugby player, the fact that this means strength, size and power is an added bonus.

Three other factors contribute to our unfortunate status as the "doping hotbed" of rugby, at least in perception (and probably, it must be said, reality). The first is a culture of supplementation that is not adequately balanced by educational messages to undermine its aggressive marketing to boys.

This culture says that training is not enough, that diets are inadequate, that muscular physiques are non-negotiable (it is the male equivalent of the perfect body type pressure), and so product X is essential.

That can, I believe, escalate rapidly, leading to problem number two - steroids are frighteningly accessible in South Africa. The gym environment is filled with people who deal in them, cheaply, so the graduation from an off-the-shelf supplement (which doesn't work well anyway) to a steroid (which can work very well) is very possible.

Finally, the South African system does not criminalise doping, and nor has it given power to various authorities to investigate it fully.

The EG Jansen principal, to his credit, took a hard stance on steroid possession but that's a minority action.

More often, our enormously competitive school system, plus the staunch defence of rights, means that authorities cannot test schoolboys and, even if they are caught, punishment is lax. The incentive to dope is strong, the barriers trivial.

So, what a 16-year-old rugby player has in common with a professional Super rugby player is that both are probably the products of the same culture, enabled by the same steroid accessibility in a "low-risk" environment.

Their journeys may not have the same purpose, but they probably covered the same ground.

There is hope on the horizon: legislation that was passed last year will make it possible for schoolboys to be tested more often, making SA the first country in the world to allow this. The next step is to target suppliers, and come down exceptionally hard on them.

SARU is pushing educational campaigns to schools, and the negative publicity around Grobler and the EG Jansen case will, hopefully, make players think twice.

With a concerted effort, rugby may avoid a permanent place in the doping spotlight at this year's World Cup.

In the absence of that effort, expect far more transgressions to be uncovered.