The former CEO of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) has defended and applauded the actions of the organisation as NRL fans and media criticise the timing of the announcement of Bronson Xerri's positive doping test just two days before the 2020 season restart.
On Tuesday it was made public that ASADA had notified the NRL and Cronulla Sharks that Xerri tested positive to banned performance-enhancing drugs. It was revealed that the test was taken back in November last year, with the six-month lapse between a test and a result dumbfounding some critics.
Former Sharks captain Paul Gallen was at the club throughout the notorious 2011 peptides scandal. He accused ASADA of "trying to create headlines" by making the announcement in a huge week for the NRL.
Sharks rival at the Dragons James Graham also questioned the timing of Tuesday's news, and respected sports journalist Peter FitzSimons told Wide World of Sports' Five Minutes with Fitzy the timing was "strange".
"Thirty years ago [with doping US Olympian Ben Johnson] it took two days. Now how on earth, 48 hours before NRL starts up again, couldn't be worse," FitzSimons said.
"I just find the timing very strange. It's not fair to the NRL. It's not fair to the young man involved. I don't know how on earth it takes six months to come up with these things tested positive."
Nine commentator Phil Gould took to Twitter to proclaim that the "timing of the announcement is irrelevant" but "it's highly suspicious".
https://twitter.com/PhilGould15/status/1265270354445864965Richard Ings was the boss at ASADA from 2005 till 2010, and has since been a vocal critic of some aspects of the body's actions. However in the matter of the Xerri case, he is firmly in ASADA's corner, and slammed those questioning the organisation.
"I've seen some things spoken about it being timed to embarrass the NRL and to cast doubt on the integrity of the season and to poo-poo the restart of the competition - ASADA doesn't even think of any of those things," Ings exclusively told Wide World of Sports.
"All they think about is - 'Have we got this case all in order? Is it bulletproof? Or do we need to drop it?'
"If ASADA needed an extra two, three, four weeks to get this done, they would have taken it.
"It's baseless. It's hyperbole [the criticism].
"This is a matter where ASADA appears to have taken a reasonable amount of time on a complex matter to reach a point where they're able to issue a notice to the sport and the player with certainty for ASADA. And that's off the back of holidays, fires and COVID-19. I'm surprised it didn't take longer."
Ings believes the Christmas shutdowns, the bushfires over summer and the coronavirus pandemic could well have been just one of the factors causing the delay since November. The COVID-19 crisis particularly could have potentially limited laboratory work with reduced capacity there a possible issue.
"If they needed to do further analysis or something like that they might've had reduced staffing and longer turnaround to get it done, or maybe a key scientist that was needed for the test wasn't available because they couldn't get in the lab because of COVID-19," Ings said.
He also raised three other key points.
"I'm just talking generally about how these things work," he said.
"The sample had quite a few different metabolites in there. It may have required some further analysis and re-analysis to confirm the contents of the sample before people were satisfied that it was a positive sample.
"The other thing that comes into this is there's just no hurry. Normally there's a rush to try and get these things done if there's a particular fixed deadline, like the Olympic teams are leaving for the Olympics or the Olympic trials are on, or the grand final is next weekend and there's a question mark ASADA has. But no-one is playing at all.
"Some of the other things that can go into this, is perhaps ASADA wanted to do some follow-up testing of that athlete. Maybe ASADA investigators before they flagged with the athlete that they found these things in the sample, perhaps they wanted to conduct their own investigation to see if there was any intelligence of traffickers or potentially other offences. Once you flag it with the athlete then anyone around them will know that ASADA has worked out what's potentially going on.
"So all these things and that's why it can take a couple of months.
"I've been quite critical of ASADA on a number of occasions but I don't see anything unusual about this one at all."
Ings said there is no set timeline for when a doping test is taken to when the results of that test should be made public, because every case is unique.
"There's never been anything like that [a standard turnaround time]," he explained.
"You announce it when you've got all your questions about the sample buttoned up. The moment you announce it you're setting things in motion - players are stood down, it's on the front page of newspapers, lawyers get involved so you want to make sure you have every 'i' dotted and 't' crossed, particularly on big matters like this, before you pull the trigger on it."
He believes the real story in the Xerri case should be that ASADA was able to identify and stop a player that had returned a positive doping test from playing.
"The worst thing you want is for a matter to be dragging on and someone's competing, scoring tries and winning prizemoney and then ASADA came out and said they were reviewing it for the last three months...and that didn't apply here," Ings said.
"The most important thing is to get it resolved before an athlete with a question mark gets back on the park and that's exactly what ASADA has done."
Ings said the road from here for Xerri is likely to end his season.
"He'll miss most of this season, and that's if he's cleared," Ings said.
"He's stood down from competition. There's a B sample, and he's entitled to be there with his lawyers and that's got to be scheduled when its convenient for him and his experts. That's got to be reviewed. If the B matches the A sample there'll be a notification of a hearing, then the lawyers will need weeks or months to prepare their arguments and counter arguments and the hearing will sit. This will take up the season.
"The player will have to step up and explain, just like Shayna Jack, 'Where did this gear come from that's in my body?' He'll have to explain where all four of the metabolites came from and not with 'I think it's from here, I didn't knowingly take anything' - he's got to prove where it came from and show someone gave him this or he inadvertently took that.
"The ban starts at four years and depending on the strength of his explanation and his degree of fault, it will start winding back from four years."
from WWOS http://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/former-asada-ceo-richard-ings-bronson-xerri-positive-test-timing/130e9286-497c-4c4b-8f28-c6e51896e55c
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