But cycling is a team sport and the doping at Astana, at US Postal, at CSC, at Telekom, at Festina etc etc was all orchestrated at a team level. Why couldnât that happen in rugby? Even cast your eyes across the Atlantic and look at the Seahawks and their regular transgressions. Again thatâs in a sport that pays lip-service at best to doping regulations. But there are pockets of doping.
For there to be an omerta and a conspiracy of silence doesnât mean it needs to be actively organised from the top-down. Again thatâs just naive. Itâs the support of individuals to do whatever they need, itâs the blind eye turned to transgressions, itâs the free-for-all attitude to medical exemptions, itâs the ignorance of abnormal weight gains, itâs the pressure put on players to absorb collisions - itâs all part of the support network for doping.
You are bizarrely arguing that the incentive to dope isnât the same as cycling. The money earned by Irish rugby internationalists is far beyond a lowly domestique at Sky or Astana or whoever. The financial incentive is just the same. Players donât just dope to make their team win. They dope to make sure they get a new contract.
How exactly is this so extraordinarily different to cycling? There were countless investigations into Lance and US Postal finances that found nothing. Any suggestion that itâs somehow more difficult to dope in rugby is frankly ridiculous.
The Irish Sports Council conducted more tests on cyclists than rugby players in 2013. Which sport had more Irish professionals? Which sport do you think you have more chance of getting caught in?
[QUOTE=âRocko, post: 1148102, member: 1â]Itâs amazing the consistency in reactions to Kimmage over the years:
âNice guy and good writing but pity heâs so bitter about cycling. Just because he doped doesnât mean everyone did.â
âWell he was right about the cycling but that doesnât make him always right. His Michelle Smyth stuff is pathetic. Pity, because I always liked him but heâs just listening to Janet Evans. Typical Irish begrudgery.â
âIâve actually always liked him as a writer and he did well before but this Lance stuff is just a vendetta at this stage. Heâs the most tested athlete in the world for Godâs sake. Iâll always like Kimmage but heâs blinded by bitterness on Lance for some reason.â
âYou know, I think Kimmage is a great writer and he called plenty of things right over the years but this rugby stuff is just nonsense. He has no evidence to back it up at all. I thought he was better than that. Pity, because heâs a good writer but heâs blinded by his own prejudices here.â[/QUOTE]
Fair points, but @Tim Riggins in his post above acknowledges kimmage as an outstanding journalist. He is rightly concerned that kimmage has used this example misleadingly, and clearly explained why. Your arguments above, and in posts afterward, are absolutely correct, but this example from kimmage just gives grist to the mill of the above stereotypical responders. You make his point.
[QUOTE=âTim Riggins, post: 1148136, member: 1382â]I didnât say there was no doping or a doping problem, just that Kimmage thinks this is cycling 2.0 and is shitting on about omerta. Only a fool would think pro players are all squeaky clean.
So far all he has uncovered is an ex French player from basically the ameteur era unhappy with the size of players and who was given cortisone in his grand crusade. The way he wrote that story you would think there was a grand conspiracy in French rugby. This is the same French rugby where overseas players have found themselves arranging their own gym sessions as clubs couldnât be arsed.
Amazing stuff Paul.
Comparing rugby to cycling is dumb. Reading about the doping programmes, there is no way they could exist in anyway the same way. This is where rugby and team sports generally deviates from individual and small team organisation sports. There was a brilliant article around the time of Armstrong from another cyclist who talked about the myth that âthey all doped, he was just the bestâ. Even aside from the point in how drugs effect people differently, the logistics required to run a first class doping programme are tough. The finanice required has to come from the top. The planning comes from top to bottom. The incentive isnât just there at an individual level, but a team one. That just canât happen in Irish rugby. There are so many layers with players moving from province to international, with so many more people involved and the employers are the governing body of the sport. The IRFU are a governing body whose finances are scrutinised and the ameteur boys still have input at every level. A doping programme of that degree is just laughable.
People are laughing at Kimmage because he does things like the above. He is blatantly stirring the pot. It is terrible journalism. Kimmage thinks he is a crusader against the authorities and people telling him heâs talking shite is proof of a cover up. Heâs still sore that David Walsh got the lions share of credit for the cycling story and that Kimmage is back at the Sindo. I guess coming back to the Irish market full time heâs seen the Joe.ie types and how rugby players and the sport are given such positive press with little questioning. He was burnt by the OâDriscoll book where the best story he had was getting drunk one time. Kimmage missed the boat on concussions and is searching around for relevance and something to burst that bubble.[/QUOTE]
Most of this, however, I would take issue with. Kimmage is a great man and a great journalist. He is tough and brave and willing to be unpopular. Probably my favourite ever journalist. You cannot compare cycling and rugby in any case. Different types of drugs etc.
I think Kimmage is a great writer. Iâm not sure about investigative journalist. He asks tough questions and I donât begrudge him for asking them about rugby. There are of course many indicators and a clear and obvious incentive to dope in rugby. However I feel like Kimmage has behaved like a buffoon on this one, he has shown ignorance of very basic supplements which is a surprise to me given his knowledge of cycling. To me he just seems to be rustling trees in the hope something will come up and uses cycling as his examples. I donât think thatâs good journalism. I struggle to take him seriously on the subject when he does stuff like the above. The big difference with Walsh and Kimmage over the years imo is the quality of their investigations. Kimmage comes from the POV of knowing and understanding cycling and what goes on. When he talks in highly emotive tones it carried weight because of that background. If he wants to be taken seriously on this subject then I wish he would stop with the shite talk on omerta and using poor evidence.
[QUOTE=âTim Riggins, post: 1148329, member: 1382â]I think Kimmage is a great writer. Iâm not sure about investigative journalist. He asks tough questions and I donât begrudge him for asking them about rugby. There are of course many indicators and a clear and obvious incentive to dope in rugby. However I feel like Kimmage has behaved like a buffoon on this one, he has shown ignorance of very basic supplements which is a surprise to me given his knowledge of cycling. To me he just seems to be rustling trees in the hope something will come up and uses cycling as his examples. I donât think thatâs good journalism. I struggle to take him seriously on the subject when he does stuff like the above. The big difference with Walsh and Kimmage over the years imo is the quality of their investigations. Kimmage comes from the POV of knowing and understanding cycling and what goes on. When he talks in highly emotive tones it carried weight because of that background. If he wants to be taken seriously on this subject then I wish he would stop with the shite talk on omerta and using poor evidence.
He went straight in with two feet here.[/QUOTE]
Heâs a journalist, not a lawyer. The whole point of his writing is to question and dispute and shine a light on what is not openly discussed. He didnât have much proof about Lance either. It wouldnât have been much of a saga if he had a smoking gun from the start. He is pointing out absolutely legitimate issues with the lack of credibility of anti-doping in rugby. Itâs not a problem unique to rugby but in terms of Irish sport, itâs probably the sport with the highest number of professionals who dope. And thereâs nothing made of it at all. There was an Irish international banned in the 90s for doping and his name was never even publically released while he served his ban. Thatâs the sort of cover-up those poor amateurs at the IRFU are well capable of.
[QUOTE=âRocko, post: 1148289, member: 1â]But cycling is a team sport and the doping at Astana, at US Postal, at CSC, at Telekom, at Festina etc etc was all orchestrated at a team level. Why couldnât that happen in rugby? Even cast your eyes across the Atlantic and look at the Seahawks and their regular transgressions. Again thatâs in a sport that pays lip-service at best to doping regulations. But there are pockets of doping.
For there to be an omerta and a conspiracy of silence doesnât mean it needs to be actively organised from the top-down. Again thatâs just naive. Itâs the support of individuals to do whatever they need, itâs the blind eye turned to transgressions, itâs the free-for-all attitude to medical exemptions, itâs the ignorance of abnormal weight gains, itâs the pressure put on players to absorb collisions - itâs all part of the support network for doping.
You are bizarrely arguing that the incentive to dope isnât the same as cycling. The money earned by Irish rugby internationalists is far beyond a lowly domestique at Sky or Astana or whoever. The financial incentive is just the same. Players donât just dope to make their team win. They dope to make sure they get a new contract.
How exactly is this so extraordinarily different to cycling? There were countless investigations into Lance and US Postal finances that found nothing. Any suggestion that itâs somehow more difficult to dope in rugby is frankly ridiculous.
The Irish Sports Council conducted more tests on cyclists than rugby players in 2013. Which sport had more Irish professionals? Which sport do you think you have more chance of getting caught in?[/QUOTE]
I have clearly stated numerous times that there is an incentive to dope in rugby.
Team incentive is not the same. The layers and complexities of the IRFU ran teams at provincial and international level are a mile from a cycling team. It is a ludicrous comparison.
As for the last bit, no they didnât. Read the actual reports. Various rugby bodies paid for additional testing. Your last line shows my issue with Kimmage, he has no problem with that misrepresentation of the facts being out there and you lap it up.
Walsh went out and got bags of evidence on Armstrong. Kimmage cried asking a question in a press conference.
Of course it is the job of a journalist to ask questions- but my example of what he did above with the graph on testing in different sports is not good journalism. Itâs a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. Thatâs basic journalism.
[QUOTE=âTim Riggins, post: 1148329, member: 1382â]I think Kimmage is a great writer. Iâm not sure about investigative journalist. He asks tough questions and I donât begrudge him for asking them about rugby. There are of course many indicators and a clear and obvious incentive to dope in rugby. However I feel like Kimmage has behaved like a buffoon on this one, he has shown ignorance of very basic supplements which is a surprise to me given his knowledge of cycling. To me he just seems to be rustling trees in the hope something will come up and uses cycling as his examples. I donât think thatâs good journalism. I struggle to take him seriously on the subject when he does stuff like the above. The big difference with Walsh and Kimmage over the years imo is the quality of their investigations. Kimmage comes from the POV of knowing and understanding cycling and what goes on. When he talks in highly emotive tones it carried weight because of that background. If he wants to be taken seriously on this subject then I wish he would stop with the shite talk on omerta and using poor evidence.
[QUOTE=âTim Riggins, post: 1148345, member: 1382â]I have clearly stated numerous times that there is an incentive to dope in rugby.
Team incentive is not the same. The layers and complexities of the IRFU ran teams at provincial and international level are a mile from a cycling team. It is a ludicrous comparison.[/quote]
Itâs your comparison Timothy, not mine.
I donât see any explanation at all of why it would be more difficult to organise doping in rugby. And you havenât at all addressed the fact that an omerta doesnât necessarily mean that the head of the IRFU is buying syringes online - itâs the culture of a blind eye, of ignoring weight changes, of ignoring rapid returns of injuries, of piling on the pressure to form, of paying lip-service to doping and then pretending you knew nothing about anything that was going on.
I read it alright. I missed the IRB testing. Either way youâre looking at a tiny proportion. IRFU testing for the Magners League is 20 players. Thatâs pathetic and is a tiny fraction of cyclingâs equivalent ratio. And even at those rates, rugby is producing higher positive tests globally.
[QUOTE=âRocko, post: 1148387, member: 1â]Itâs your comparison Timothy, not mine.
I donât see any explanation at all of why it would be more difficult to organise doping in rugby. And you havenât at all addressed the fact that an omerta doesnât necessarily mean that the head of the IRFU is buying syringes online - itâs the culture of a blind eye, of ignoring weight changes, of ignoring rapid returns of injuries, of piling on the pressure to form, of paying lip-service to doping and then pretending you knew nothing about anything that was going on.
I read it alright. I missed the IRB testing. Either way youâre looking at a tiny proportion. IRFU testing for the Magners League is 20 players. Thatâs pathetic and is a tiny fraction of cyclingâs equivalent ratio. And even at those rates, rugby is producing higher positive tests globally.[/QUOTE]
That is disingenuous. For the year you referred to and clearly didnât bother to read the report, there were 105 additional tests paid for by the IRFU/ERC/Six Nations/IRB. Even aside from the fact that you ignored that, Iâm not sure what you were getting at at the Irish Sports Councilâs testing of rugby vs cycling. The ISC decide testing on a risk basis, it is up to them. Rugby decides to carry out additional testing and of 225 additional tests in 2013, 105 were rugby related - meaning rugby bodies but their hands in their pockets to pay for extra tests. And before you get back to me talking about the number of tests in cycling over the years didnât prove anything - Iâm not saying that the testing is full proof by any means - just that it is wrong to represent the ISCâs testing figures as some kind of decision within rugby bodies to put their heads in the sand, when in fact they are putting more resources into testing than others.
An Irish international told me personally about doping in Irish and world rugby. When I relayed this news to PK, he rang me almost immediately and we went for coffee the next day. He then travelled a couple of hundred km to to try and talk to that player and a team-mate of his who heâd also received information on.
Neither would talk to him.
Now just because he doesnât write that in the Indo, it doesnât mean heâs not thoroughly investigating. An investigation does not consist of public facts of failed dope tests or CCTV shots of Jamie Heaslip injecting himself with HGH. Itâs meeting people with a possible lead and following it up.
You seem like an intelligent lad, why canât you get your head around that. Oh yeah, itâs buried in the sand.
[QUOTE=âThrawneen, post: 1148602, member: 129â]An Irish international told me personally about doping in Irish and world rugby. When I relayed this news to PK, he rang me almost immediately and we went for coffee the next day. He then travelled a couple of hundred km to to try and talk to that player and a team-mate of his who heâd also received information on.
Neither would talk to him.
Now just because he doesnât write that in the Indo, it doesnât mean heâs not thoroughly investigating. An investigation does not consist of public facts of failed dope tests or CCTV shots of Jamie Heaslip injecting himself with HGH. Itâs meeting people with a possible lead and following it up.
You seem like an intelligent lad, why canât you get your head around that. Oh yeah, itâs buried in the sand.[/QUOTE]
Yes I can see he is âthoroughly investigatingâ. So far he has an ex French international from the amateur era saying the guys are too big and has posted a graph of ISC testing deliberately ignoring additional tests paid for by individual sporting bodies, of which rugby is the one paying for nearly 50% of those.
I know heâs your mate and hero, doesnât take away from the sloppy and poor investigation he has done so far.
Iâm calling his investigation and ramblings on this a joke, not the idea that there could be a major problem with doping in rugby.
If you want to know why Kimmage left the Sunday Times long before the Armstrong âvindicationâ and David Walsh did not, despite Walsh causing a huge financial headache for News International, look at their investigations history.
Kimmage wrote a brilliant first hand book on his experiences in cycling and knew what was going on. However in addition to that, he uncovered nothing apart from a couple of interviews.
I know youâre all fanboys and I hate to burst the bubble, great writer and a good guy but not at investigating.
[QUOTE=âTim Riggins, post: 1148604, member: 1382â]Yes I can see he is âthoroughly investigatingâ. So far he has an ex French international from the amateur era saying the guys are too big and has posted a graph of ISC testing deliberately ignoring additional tests paid for by individual sporting bodies, of which rugby is the one paying for nearly 50% of those.
I know heâs your mate and hero, doesnât take away from the sloppy and poor investigation he has done so far.
Iâm calling his investigation and ramblings on this a joke, not the idea that there could be a major problem with doping in rugby.[/QUOTE]
You are caught up on rugby paying for the tests. How else do you think testing gets funded? Rugby chooses to outsource its competition testing to different organisations in different countries. Clearly, it has to pay for those services. In the UK, they are done by UKAD, in Ireland itâs the Irish Sports Council. It doesnât mean theyâre going above and beyond - it means theyâre paying a testing organisation to carry out some tests - a really small number of them.
[QUOTE=âThrawneen, post: 1148617, member: 129â]His investigations are being hampered as there seems to BE a major problem with doping AND thereâs an Ămerta, just as there was/is in cycling.
Heâll get there yet, give him time and have a good old laugh while you can.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=âThrawneen, post: 1148617, member: 129â]His investigations are being hampered as there seems to BE a major problem with doping AND thereâs an Ămerta, just as there was/is in cycling.
Heâll get there yet, give him time and have a good old laugh while you can.[/QUOTE]
Good luck to him.
From what heâs produced so far, I wouldnât be too confident.
What are you talking about? Of course rugby outsources itâs testing, when was that queried?
Paul Kimmage brought up the number of rugby tests vs other sports in that picture on the previous page. Then you said âThe Irish Sports Council conducted more tests on cyclists than rugby players in 2013â, this is untrue. What you both ignored was that rugby undertakes additional testing, more than 100% more than what the Irish Sports Council decide to do - âUser Pays Programme The Council also conducts testing under the User Pays Programme. This is where a sporting organisation pays for testing. During 2013, 225 tests were conducted under this programme - 165 urine tests and 60 blood tests.â - 105 of these tests were rugby related.