Steroids would improve sport

When I was 10 years old I started playing Rugby. I was an imposing 4ft 8” (though even that might be generous). With a career as the next England captain in front of me, I returned to pre season training with the under 11 squad for an introduction to full contact. So began 6 years of big kids kicking the shit out of me.

I doubt I am alone in this. You may even be one of these ‘big kids’ yourself. Even then, I’m willing to bet there’s always been someone bigger. You see, ‘big kids’ are the real problem that is rampant in our sport today, simple genetics are what we should be taking urine samples for. Steven Gerrard was told in the Liverpool youth academy it was fine him being able to crack it at 50 mph as a teenager, if he didn’t hit 6ft he was out.

So where does that leave us? A sporting world dominated by the best bred, is this something we should be standing for? Bringing in the change is easy, especially when we have the answer already on the table.

Steroids and performance enhancing drugs are already endemic in some of the worlds biggest sports. The elephants in the room (almost literally) are the body builders, but flying in at 70mph on 2 wheels just behind them are the cyclists. Erythropoietin (EPO) is a designer drug of today which is untraceable in the system after 6 hours and makes you go like Usain Bolt. To be a professional cyclist and abstaining from taking this isn’t noble, or ‘in the spirit of competition’, it’s mental. Everybody’s doing it.

Steroids are a great leveler. They let you train harder and help make you a better player. Better players make for better sport

Still, with every key stroke I hear the nay sayers and the yet to be converted. “What about practising every day to get good” “Shouldn’t take shortcuts” “It’s cheating”. Allow me to now explain why I chose these complaints in particular as I succinctly answer them. I’ll start at the end, it’s only cheating whilst the rules make it cheating, if you change the rules it isn’t cheating, the entire game of Rugby I spent 6 years learning to detest was only invented because some public school boy was crap at football and cheated, cheating can be good (that’s a bad example of that though...).

As for saying you shouldn’t take short cuts, that you should just work hard, you still can. Truly, I have never grasped that argument as being anything less than a fundamental lack of understanding about how Steroids work. You don’t spend 2 days just taking them, get class in an afternoon and sleep till Sunday. Even if you were 6’ 6” and built like a brick shit house you think you could play the between-the-legs shot Roger Federer busts out? I didn’t think so.

I think that’s the point I’ve spent a long winded 400 or so words trying to make so far, steroids are a great leveler. They let you train harder and help make you a better player. Better players make for better sport. I accept they are a problem whilst they remain illegal in sport. The honest and rule abiding (who I am actually for) are punished by those who break the rules, but what better way to deal with a problem that has no realistic end insight than to stop making it a problem?

Anyway, that’s my dream and my piece on it. I’m off to go put 200lbs on and yell at some people from speaker’s corner in Hyde Park about it. A very muscular hand shake goodbye.