“Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them – a desire, a dream, a vision”
Muhammad Ali
ALTHOUGH a football man, I would consider myself a sports fan in general. The thing that I love about sport is that there are no hiding places in competition. It is every sportsperson or team against another.
I was glued to the television during the London 2012 Olympic Games. I loved watching those who had something deep inside them, as Muhammad Ali says, that makes them better than anyone else. However, just a few months after those Olympics Games the full truth of Lance Armstrong’s drug-taking was revealed.
Since then I’ve started to wonder how many of those great performances in the Olympics were a result of drug-taking. Armstrong was able to pass drug tests despite, as he regularly said, being the most tested cyclist in the world.
In a recent BBC documentary on drugs in athletics, the reporter took the blood-boosting drug EPO and was able to beat the drug testing system. If someone without basic medical back-up was able to cheat the system then it should be relatively simple for most athletes to do the same.
As sports fans we deserve to believe the great performances produced by sports people. Great sportspeople need natural talent, but also the ‘desire, dream and vision’ that Ali talks about.
When news broke of a Monaghan player failing a drugs test, I assumed straight away the player had taken a supplement not realising what was in it. The use of supplements is now widespread across the GAA. Creatine and protein were the supplements of choice during my own career, but I only took them for a limited time.
The growth in the supplement market means that players can buy supplements for virtually everything. A significant number of players assume any supplement they buy in a shop could not contain banned substances. The reality is the opposite is the case for a significant number of them.
Drug-testing had only arrived in the GAA when I joined the Tyrone squad in 2002. With it being something new, I believe we were all well-informed of what we could and could not take. The instruction was always to check before taking any supplements or medicines.
We had our own drugs officer who was also a pharmacist and he supplied us with everything from a medical point of view. It meant that anything we put into our body was checked before we made a mistake.I was tested four times during my county career, once after the National League final in 2002 and three times at training.
There is nothing enjoyable about the drug-testing procedure, certainly not when you are only getting home at midnight after being tested at training. However, as a player, I had no issues with being subject to testing. I’ve heard plenty say that, as GAA players are amateur, they should not be subject to drug-testing, but I would totally reject that opinion.
As the years went on, there was certainly less of an emphasis put on educating players. Professional athletes are tested several times each year, but when you might only get tested once every two or three years in the GAA then it is very easy for players to forget about it.
County boards and management teams must take responsibility for ensuring players are informed of the rules in place and put structures in place to ensure everything they take is checked beforehand.
After reading the report of the case, it is clear that Thomas Connolly was let down by a lack of structures in Monaghan. I’ve been very surprised by the lack of debate that has taken place since the failed test.
I understand that people held fire until the details of the case became public, but the silence since then has shocked me. There was no mention of it on The Sunday Game last weekend. The Sunday newspapers decided it wasn’t an important issue. It seems most people are happy to ignore it and treat it as an isolated case.
I have huge sympathy on a personal level for Thomas Connolly and his family. No doubt the last few months have been a difficult time for them. However, the authorities must have a zero tolerance policy on drugs within the GAA.
The judgement in the case accepted that he had not intentionally taken the substance, thus reducing the ban from the standard punishment of a four-year suspension down to two years. As a player, you are totally responsible for everything you take. He failed the test after accepting tablets from a work colleague with the promise that they would reduce pain after training.
Once you take tablets from someone who is not medically trained, the alarm bells should be ringing in your head. The benefits of reduced pain should also have stirred suspicion. For those reasons, I don’t believe the committee hearing the case made the right decision in reducing the ban from four years down to two years.
Considering this was the first major incident of a GAA player failing a drug test, I expected the GAA to send out a strong message by confirming the standard ban of four years.
The obvious question to ask is ‘do we have a problem with drug-taking in the GAA?’ I’ve been really surprised by the lack of debate that has arisen around the potential use of drugs in the sport.
I think it would be wrong to categorically state that nobody within the sport is taking performance-enhancing drugs. I certainly didn’t expect to see a player fail a test for taking stanozolol, the anabolic steroid taken by sprinter Ben Johnson. However, I do think there are a small number of players taking supplements which contain banned substances.
I believe there is a mix of some players being reckless by not getting them checked out and some that are taking them for the obvious performance benefits. I must stress that I believe it is limited numbers.
I’ve no doubt some good will come from this failed test. The GAA and county boards will need to take a lead in educating the players, continuously reinforcing the importance of them being careful.
Players should only be taking medicines and supplements supplied by their own county. Too many players are putting their futures, both football and non-footballing, in the hands of supplement manufacturers.
