How can they be expected to spend half their leisure time rogering their team-mates wives if they have to disclose their locations?
p.s. I think it's likely that football stretches medical science to get players back fit as soon as possible but I tend to work on the 'innocent until proven guilty' theory. That's why people stating (as fact) things like "doping is ... well established in the big leagues" annoys me.
You remember a few years ago when Rio Ferdinand was caught climbing out of a bathroom window to escape from a dope control test?No I don't remember that. Could you provide a link please?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/3333091.stm
Google Rio Ferdinand and there's half a dozen stories that pop up in the first 10 links.
None of them mention being caught climbing out of a bathroom window.
Do you have a link for that?
"caught climbing out of a bathroom window" or "seen shopping on King Street" - much the same, why let the facts spoil a good story?
I tend to work on the 'innocent until proven guilty' theory
I'm not convinced the theory applies terribly well to the situation. It makes a lot of sense when you're dealign with an individual accused of murder by the state. But that isn't a good analogy here. Try instead thinking of these guys as public companies listed on the FTSE. You don't even get to list your shares unless you have excellent corporate governance and impeccable accounting and auditing. Because you have that, investors will buy your shares in the market with confidence.
If your accounts aren't audited, no-one has any confidence that your business is what you say it is, and they won't buy into it.
Same with sportsmen. They aren't doing harm by cheating particularly. But the whole edifice of the sport requires the fans to invest confidence in it. Given what we know about the prevalence of doping in many sports, we have to assume that there is a risk of it in any sport. If fans are to invest confidence in their favouritre players/teams etc, those people need to be absolutely transparent about not cheating, otherwise no-one has confidence in the results of competitions and the whole thing starts to unravel. 
That's why people stating (as fact) things like "doping is ... well established in the big leagues" annoys me.
Hand up!
My logic.
1. Doping was well run and effective in cycling at a very minimum.
2. There have been episodes of organised doping being uncovered in football - eg Juventus (http://www.wsc.co.uk/component/option,com_kunena/Itemid,73/func,view/catid,27/id,388361/) which show that it does happen to some extent at least
3. Professional Football is a pretty ethically, morally bereft sport
4. Puerto is widely accepted/believed to have included a lot of football players
5. Dope testing in football is laughably lax
6. The heart attacks - exactly what happened in cycling and was passed off as normal/innocent
None of this is proof but it sufficiently circumstancial for me to believe that it is the case. Just as it was for cycling when there was no proof that EPO and blood doping was going on but we were all pretty sure it was and were proven right.
I take your point BigDummy, if one were not on drugs it would most definitely be galling to be beaten by someone on drugs. But are there any top cyclists who are not on drugs? Come to that are there any top sportspeople who are not on drugs?
Please don't think I'm promoting or excusing drugs, just discussing.
Come to that are there any top sportspeople who are not on drugs?
I think that these days, yes there are even though there are still plenty of cheats - there have certainly been bad times where the answers may have been predominantly 'no' though.
This sort of thing needs to be universal. But the fact that Wiggins did it gives quite a bit of confidence in his performance in last year's TdF. If we accept Wiggins to have been clean, there were enough people in the same league as him for us to imagine that it might have been a reasonably clean race...
Well in cycling, while there's still doping going on, all the controls, blood profiling and so on have made it much harder to do without getting caught and in many ways, more importantly made it much less effective - eg having to microdose EPO, etc rather than just full on EPO use - which will undoubtedly have helped level the field.
Nothing to do with naivety at all - my job is actually very closely connected with UK Anti-Doping, I think out of everyone on here I'm probably better placed than most to at least have an idea of what's going on...
Fair enough, apologies! whats your take on the tour series in the UK? I get the impression that theres not much doping going on at that standard, but to get to the next level would you say riders are under the impression they 'need' to dope to make the step up to UCI pro tour standard? I've always thought that thats the case, and I've spoken to one UK pro tour rider (friend of a friend) and he pretty much said that thats the case. would you agree?
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