I wrote the below on another forum re. the doping by the Goldcoast Titans rugby league team and how to manage doping in rugby, vaguely relevant to this discussion I think:
This is a bit of a pet subject for me as the other sport I follow is cycling which has obviously more than its fair share of doping scandals. I’m pretty firmly of the belief that most, if not all, professional sports have a lot of doping going on, football, rugby (both codes), tennis, you name it, they all dope. I would be gob smacked if the recent results at the Titans are a one off or a result of a few individuals who were the exceptions not the rule (though I have no doubt this is how it will be reported)
The question is how to deal with it. Cycling, in recent years at least, has been very open about it’s problems, it tests more regularly than pretty much any other sport and is open and honest about any positive results than come through. As a result, you see and hear of lots of positive results and people draw their conclusions about doping being endemic in the sport. Football (soccer if you must) and tennis on the other hand do quite the opposite. Minimal testing with no interest in doing more of it, positive results swept under the carpet and/or hidden from the general public and a pubic stance of “no, not us, nothing to see here, we’re all clean as a whistle…”, very much like cycling in the 80’s and 90’s in fact.
Personally, I would love to see rugby take a more cycling based approach and be rigorous in their testing and honest in the results. However, I see that as unlikely as why would a sports governing body sign up to something that will inevitably lead to more positive test results and so more negative press?