Shane Byrne has responded to Paul Kimmage's recent articles on doping in rugby. In an interview with 98FM's Johnny Lyons, Byrne prefaced his comments by saying that if cheating is uncovered it should be punished harshly, but expressed surprise at the broad brush nature of the accusations.
He said fermenting suspicion about the sport simply on the basis of the size of the participants was not enough. Actual evidence is needed.
This debate can very quickly turn into something that it's not. Like, Paul Kimmage is just going 'we should have the opne debate' but there's need to be something that we're talking about. Rugby is very precise about what you can and can't go about your training and what you can and can't do.
He defended the use of supplements, saying that they do not contain banned substances and they are purely used to build up the body. He agreed that the supplement culture starts early and that it was wrong that young players should feel under pressure to use them, but points out they do not adverse affects in the same way drugs do. He detailed how the Irish team used them extensively in the lead-up to the 2003 World Cup, but in the correct way.
He said in eighteen years of professional rugby he only knew of one player who took drugs - and they were social ones, not performance enhancing and it was pre-professionalism.
As training becomes better, guys get bigger... If there is something to it, yeah, find it, go at it, absolutely zero tolerance to anyone taking steroids. An if anyone is found doing it they should be gone. But we need to be talking about something that is fact, that is going on, rather than 'oh look at the size of them, there must be something going on here.'
Listen to the interview here.
