Wellington Lions & Ex Hurricanes player seen snorting ecstasy on social media video

Where did this happen?

One report suggests a Wellington rugby club, silly-billy.

Hutt Old Boys Marist to be exact.

Off?

A century old sporting shield.

Rugby people love their traditions.

What shit are we talking?

MDMA.

That’s ecstasy to most folk.

Surely, the player involved will be banned?

Rugby authorities in N.Z take incidents like this very seriously.

The offender, James O'Reilly, can’t play for a hefty…..drum-roll…..two weeks!

Details.

Just how big is drug abuse amongst N.Z Rugby players?

Only a month back Drug Free Sport New Zealand told us its investigation looking-into Josh Townshend on-line steroid shop, involved rugby players ‘mostly at the lower levels of sport’.  

A wee bit on Josh Townshend’s’ operation, before I address the crux of this post. 

Anyone buying performance enhancing products off his Clenbuterol site, all 100 odd known customers, knew what they were getting. 

They were not naive to this fact, just the belief they wouldn’t get caught.   

Those caught when Townshend went down were not largely what the N.Z Public think about as purchasers of performance enhancing drugs. 

His main clients weren’t Kiwi bodybuilders or cyclists. 

The largest recreational demographic were rugby players. 

Over half, if media reports are accurate and this story is constantly evolving.   

We were also told, as rugby circles raced into damage control, that no top players were involved. 

Just a bunch of no-name club players we were led to believe. 

Wrongly as the individual cases came to light.   

We’ve now learnt Clenbuterol clientele included a player from the female equivalent of The All Blacks (Black Ferns) and two NPC players. 

There are hundreds, if not thousands of sites on the net where anyone can but performance enhancing drugs. 

Not just out of the backrooms of Christchurch houses. 

Townshend’s operation was a global small-fry. 

What are the odds of other Kiwi rugby players purchasing steroids off an overseas site?

 

I am not being flippant or churlish when I say 100% chance this has occurred.       

Enough ‘smoke coming from the fire’ already for New Zealand Rugby to start testing schoolboy players.  

Steroid abuse within N.Z rugby is a marketing nightmare. 

Who wants to be involved with an athlete/team/sport where cheating is involved? 

Ask U.S Postal Service for the short-sharp-sweet answer to that one.  

So just how many drugs cheats are involved in N.Z Rugby?  

 

The starting mark is 50 + and counting.

 

 

N.Z Rugby players appear to be front & centre when it comes to purchasing performance enhancing drugs

Imprisoned drug dealer Cantab Josh Townshends’ identified clients numbered around a 100. 

Over 40 per cent of them were involved in the sport of rugby, one at ‘elite’ level. 

If what-is in the public domain is to be believed.     

That’s details that are being drip feed to the public as each separate sporting code deals with the fall-out.  

This is an astonishingly high percentage given rugby playing numbers are not anywhere close to say Kiwi cyclists.

And when you think of illegal anabolic steroid and hormone abuse, it’s cycling most people think of as the main ‘offender’ along with body-building.  

And whilst N.Z Ice Hockey has dealt-out two-year bans to two national representatives who purchased products from Townshends Clenbuterol NZ website, all we’ve heard from N.Z Rugby is promises to co-operate. 

Mutterings of wanting the sport to be clean.

 

No cathartic name and shaming a-la N.Z Ice Hockey.    

Where are N.Z Rugby's “tough responses” given the Townshend ‘went down’ in May?  

If rugby in N.Z so ‘clean’ why have Drug Free Sport NZ instigated drugs tests at schoolboy rugby level!?   

 

Made drug tests the norm for school first fifteens. 

Surely rugby players themselves must want to know who these drug cheats are? 

This situation is yet another case of N.Z Rugby wiping things under the carpet in the hope it goes away.  

Sponsors want nothing to do with a sport that’s tainted with drugs.  

Rugby is staring down a barrel here.

 

Ex Highlanders and Southland Stags player suspended due to alleged cocaine use

 

 

I’m not going to spiel on about John Hardie who has switched allegiances to Scotland. 

Read about his issues with Scottish Rugby officialdom HERE. 

There is however an emerging thread of high cocaine use in professional rugby. 

 

A quick poke-around here will be enough to convince most. 

An issue mainstream media are deliberately ignoring.

 

Note: All individuals are considered innocent till proven otherwise

 

 

Tuipulotu’s alleged positive drug test will have HUGE ramifications

Sponsors hate having their names tarnished.  

For example in the case of Losi Filipo, Wellington Rugby buckled in part under threats sponsors would pull-out unless he was dumped. 

One global sponsor that takes a hard-line on its athletes taking drugs is Adidas. 

The International Association of Athletics Federation and Tyson Gay have recently had their lucrative deals put through their Bavarian shredder.   

So how will Kasper Rorsted (CEO Adidas) be feeling as he thumbs through Das Spiegel to find All Blacks lock Patrick Tuipulotu has reportedly been caught using a banned substance? 

 

Read the initial story here.   

What sort of drugs/chemical substances we don’t know at this stage.

One would presume ‘performance enhancing’ for example would be viewed in a very, very dim light. 

Were Tuipulotu to be found – these are only allegations at this stage – to be using a performance enhancing substance as opposed to getting caught-out smoking a joint whilst listening to Pink Floyd, this has the potential to develop into a major embarrassing issue for N.Z Rugby.

And they damn well know it. 

That’s why NZ Rugby and ’s local union. Auckland, have been plying the line since November that he’s simply had an "on-going personal matter".     

This from an entity which brandishes the words ‘standards’  and ‘professionalism’ like confetti from Richie McCaws wedding.  

What action will the International Rugby Board take? 

Protocols dictate they know the moment any professional player tests positive even for recreational use.

Especially one playing in the world’s top ranked team. 

The World Rugby dot org site is strangely silent? 

Perhaps they were trying to think of something more original than “on-going personal matter”? 

But now the story has broken.

 

This has legs, ten-times the size of Tuipulotu's.  

It will now run and run despite obvious attempts by N.Z Rugby to snuff-it-out and hide it in the closet.  

Steve Tew will be forced to front the media today. 

"Steve, when did you first know of this positive test?"

"Did Patrick play any games after the positive test was first reported?" 

"What sort of banned substances are we talking here Steve? Recreational or performance enhancing?"

Don't think you'll get a straight answer to any of these pertinent questions. 

Not right away.

But it will all come-out.  

This comes close after the failed Wellingtons Seven’s and my bet is Tew’s time is up.

 

Potentially this could be the most embarrassing thing to happen to N.Z Rugby in the professional era depending on what the banned substance was, when it was first discovered.  

Tarnishing the All Black name forever.

Up-Date Friday 10^th February: The B-Test for a performance enhancing drug came in negative. Apparently 1 positive + 1 negative = you are off the hook. I bet the cycling fraternity would look at this ‘benefit of the doubt’ decision and shake their heads. Sure, mistakes can occur in the testing process, but from the same sample? What are the chances? What exactly was the drug involved? Something you could innocently acquire off the Chemist shelf, or more nefarious akin to under-the-table body-building supplement? Kindly point it out to us on the World Anti-Doping Agency's 2016 Prohibited List.  Why call a positive drug test ‘personal reasons’ when the next time an All Black has to depart from a tour if say his child is sick, the public could think “that’s a smoke-screen”? Why wait so long for the B Sample to be tested? Why, when the news media askes these questions no-one can get a straight answer? One could feel they are hiding something were one was a nasty prick. Not me though.           

 

   

Pill Popping Southland Player Caught

Former New Zealand under-20s prop Tukiterangi Jahna Raimona appeared in the Invercargill District Court last week where he admitted dishonestly obtaining a prescription form with intent to obtain a pecuniary advantage on February 18.  

The Southland court was told Raimona presented a prescription form at an Invercargill pharmacy for Triazolam 60 tablets, Diazepan 60 tablets and Oxynorm 40 but because of the controlled nature of the drugs inquiries were made.  

The script pad was stolen from none other than Southland NPC teams doctor!   

In case you are not up with the play so-called sportsmen are mixing energy drinks and prescription medicines, including sleeping pills, in search of a "legal high" that skirts drug and alcohol testing.  

The obvious question on everyone’s lips is “What was Raimona going to do with such a large stash?” 

Get an artificial high every night for the next five to six months?   

Taking orders seems more likely and if so who for?   

Southland Rugby is dodging that curly one!