Gatland not sure of Francis’ intent in Bok drug cheat claims

Former Wales coach Warren Gatland said that he was unsure what Neil Francis’ intent was with his opinion piece in the Irish Times.

Francis claimed that South African rugby is dogged by a steroid culture citing Aphiwe Dyantyi’s positive drugs tests, the career of Chilliboy Rallepelle, as well as a survey of schoolboy players in KZN.

The former Irish international offered his opinion based off of information freely available to the public but suggested there was a deeper conspiracy within South African rugby without any hard evidence.

Francis said that banning Dyantyi would not get to the root of the problem but then went on to suggest that World Rugby did not want to investigate the newly crowned World Champions.

“Banning Dyantyi for four years solves nothing. It is the people behind the player you have to nab. Maybe World Rugby would be happier not to find out that this is the case,” he wrote.

“In a recent state-sponsored survey conducted by the South African Institute for Drug Free Sport, a poll of 12,000 high school boys showed that 10 per cent of them took anabolic steroids. The poll was conducted in the Kwa Zulu-Natal region of the country.

“Why would high school boys admit to taking steroids if they had not taken them in the first place? It’s only a sample but 1,200 boys, some as young as 13? Where did these children get this stuff? How could their parents not know? How could the schools and the unions not know?

“How certain are we when we point a finger to suggest there is a steroid culture in a country that has just won the World Cup? Fairly certain.

“Is Dyantyi, a poster boy for the World Cup and winner of World Rugby’s young player of the year, the only one? Or the only one to be caught?

“The player in my view will go down but the system stays in place. What were we saying about latitude and dispensation? Do we need to put an asterisk beside the winners of the 2019 World Cup?”

Gatland questions Francis’ motivation

The former Wales boss said that Francis’ motivation for writing the column should be questioned, saying that it might have stemmed from bitterness.

“I thought Francis was pretty hard-hitting in terms of the article he wrote about the South African,” Gatland said in an interview with Off the Ball.

“I kind of thought ‘was it being journalistic, or was it trying to take the gloss off South Africa or was it bitterness as well?’ I’m not sure about that.”

Gatland revealed that he has been suspicious of at least one Wales player when it comes to possible steroid use but wouldn’t name names as he had no proof.

“You know I haven’t come across personally any players that I’ve coached from a Wales perspective that I would – well sorry, maybe one. Maybe one, now that I think about it.

“It’s probably a little bit unfair of me to say I had suspicions about one of them because I’ve got no evidence or anything like that.

“Because it’s kind of like just saying, ‘Is there a possibility?’… It was more like a couple of people making jokes sort of thing. And you go, ‘Oh is that…'”

Gatland has taken up a position with the Chiefs in Super Rugby back in New Zealand but will coach the British and Irish Lions on their tour of South Africa in 2021.