It is a state of affairs feared by many to be prevalent in the sport, and now a BBC investigation has uncovered the alarming scale of performance-enhancing drugs in Welsh club rugby.
Rugby has traditionally had far fewer high-profile doping cases when compared with the likes of cycling or athletics, but the physical demands of the sport have led some to question how so few could be guilty of seizing an illegal advantage.
The Week In Week Out programme, due to air tonight in Wales, surveyed 100 players from grassroots rugby clubs in Wales and found that 15 were prepared to admit they had engaged in doping, with just five of the 100 claiming to have been subjected to a drug test in the previous three years.
Two Welsh club players have received bans in recent weeks, but one former player told the programme that he was shocked that more cheats were not being discovered given the scope of the problem.
The ex-player said: “It’s totally off-the-scale. I think people are probably blind to it and if the truth came out I think there would be probably a lot more players who are banned from playing.”
Seventeen Welsh rugby players, union and league, are currently serving suspensions, accounting for more than half of those banned in the UK, but anti-doping expert Prof Yannis Pitsiladis said the low level of detection gave players the confidence to engage in doping.
“They can be quite confident when they go into testing that they won’t be caught because the current testing will not be able to detect those drugs, because they are no longer in the system,” he said.
