Graham Kelly: Protecting innocent harder than catching drug cheats

Football is suggested to be one of the sports, along with cycling, which will be targeted for its alleged soft penalties on drug offenders at the three-day conference, opening today in Copenhagen, at which the World Anti-Doping Agency will propose the adoption of its first Code of Practice since taking over responsibility from the International Olympic Committee.

One of the aims of the conference, to be attended by representatives of governments and sports bodies, will be to agree uniform penalties in an attempt to "transform the fight against drug-taking". Richard Caborn, the UK Minister for Sport subscribes to the principle of consistency and transparency across all sports.

Transparency is all very well as a means of deterring others, but when we enter the doctor's surgery we all believe that what is said goes no further. In effect, football receives government subsidies for its drug awareness programme, because the testing is carried out by UK Sport on behalf of the Football Association. The FA was right to resist pressure to name and shame a recent "drug cheat", who tested positive for nandrolone, but will the renewed worldwide push for accountability result in a clash?

It's true that historically football, both at home and abroad, has been ambivalent about this complex and emotive subject, about which the men in tracksuits knew little and those in board rooms even less. And it's true also that when Paul Merson confessed to his cocaine use in 1994 and, as tests were stepped up, Lee Bowyer and others were caught after using cannabis as a social drug, the emphasis was placed on rehabilitation and education rather than punishment.

Football has followed the IOC medical code, but not its draconian two-year suspensions. Thankfully so, because, for example, the International Olympic Committee does not acknowledge that nandrolone is both an anabolic steroid and a naturally occurring hormone and there was a flurry of positive tests in European football two years ago involving Jaap Stam, Edgar Davids and Frank de Boer.

Dick Pound, WADA's president, believes that names should be released as a deterrent as soon as a positive test is ascertained. Coupled with the harsh policy of strict liability – which in civil law places responsibility for product quality strictly on producers of goods, not on consumers as the IOC does so perversely – Pound apparently presumes that to be arrested is to be found guilty, not of any offence, but of as yet uncorroborated evidence.

Presumably, he brought this belief from the IOC, where inconsistencies have abounded in its so-called anti-doping policy, particularly since the advent of the high-resolution testing equipment in 1996.The flood of positive tests so flustered the then president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, that he called a special conference in Lausanne, the very conference which led to the establishment of WADA, saying: "Performance-enhancement, for me, is not doping; if the athlete's health is damaged, that is doping."

Urine analysis can detect substances to two parts in 100 billion. That's equivalent to a U2 spy plane revealing on the same photograph that the nails of Saddam's right big toe and of George W's ring finger need cutting. So are we being misled by being told that Shane Warne's diuretic was capable of masking an anabolic steroid when the Australian Cricket Board knows none was there, otherwise it would have been declared? A monstrous injustice has been committed in the name of drug-free sport.

Had Warne been an English cricketer or footballer with a strong players' association to support him, there is no way he would have been staring at such a huge loss of earnings. What is drug-free sport supposed to mean, anyway?

Presumably, avoidance of use by performers of any of the 154 drugs on the IOC's banned list. But what is absent in the climate of hysteria so aptly identified by Warne is any mature debate about what constitutes an unfair advantage or undue harm to the competitor.

The misuse of medications is more likely to have been a problem in football than drugs. Who is to say that Roy Keane is not risking long-term damage if he is receiving anti-inflammatory injections?

Even aspirin is performance-enhancing and, taken to excess, harmful to health, but it does not feature on the IOC list.

The conference can mark a breakthrough from the tyrannical 35-year regime of the IOC. But while we want to track down cheats, it is better to have five cheats go unpunished rather than one athlete punished unfairly, as the IOC's Jacques Rogge said three summers ago. That was before he succeeded Samaranch as president, of course.

To safeguard against this, should Caborn commit to an agreement, all performers must read the small print between now and the date the new code comes into operation, 1 January 2004. And football must decide whether to stay in the fold or go it alone.

grahamkelly@btinternet.com