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.