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Springboks outcast Aphiwe Dyantyi finally has a doping offence hearing date
By Online Editors
Springboks outcast Aphiwe Dyantyi has finally been given a date for his career-defining hearing into his 2019 doping offence which could see him banned for four years.
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Now 26, the 13-times capped winger has been in limbo these past 13 months. It was August last year when Dyantyi, who had been in pre-World Cup training with the Springboks, was formally charged with a doping offence for multiple anabolic steroids and metabolites after his B-sample also tested positive.
That was when SA Rugby confirmed the South African Institute of Drug-Free Sport (SAIDS) had detected an adverse analytical finding in the sample collected from the Springboks player in a doping test on July 2 while he was attending a South African training camp.
A statement at the time said: “SA Rugby, the Lions Rugby Company and Dyantyi are working with SAIDS, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and all other relevant authorities on the matter and no further comment can be made at this stage.”
The player has been given a hearing date – September 15 – to finally explain himself after a year in which the 2018 World Rugby breakthrough player of the year was suspended and missed his country’s World Cup win in Japan. According to @rugby365com, Khalid Galant, CEO of SAIDS, has said the hearing will now not be completely virtual as was initially thought.
Bad news for their Rugby Championship hopes. #RugbyChampionship #Argentina #Pumas pic.twitter.com/fXbj5x9dk2
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) September 5, 2020
Dyantyi has long protested his innocence, issuing a statement last year when he was formally charged. “I want to deny ever taking any prohibited substance, intentionally or negligently, to enhance my performance on the field,” he said.
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“I believe in hard work and fair play. I have never cheated and never will. The presence of this prohibited substance in my body has come as a massive shock to me and together with my management team and experts appointed by them, we are doing everything we can to get to the source of this and to prove my innocence.
“As a professional sportsman on national and international level, we get tested on a regular basis. I have been tested before and again since this test. Taking any prohibited substance would not only be irresponsible and something that I would never intentionally do. It would also be senseless and stupid.”
"Whereas van Grann has now lost five of these last-four fixtures (three in the league, two in Europe), Leinster remain the beacon on how to learn from your semi-final mishaps"
– Liam Heagney on the @PRO14Official Leinster vs Munster fallout ???
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) September 5, 2020
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Merci Shawn,
Go to commentsThe All Blacks and their continued success basically fund the entire game here. In countries with much bigger economies and larger rugby audiences they can push players more knowing that irrespective of rep or club teams success the size of their economy means that they will always get decent crowd buy in and hides the fact that it is the game itself that is deterring crowd attendance here in NZ. It seems that NZRU have made the decision that the All Blacks, rightly, must be kept in the best position to win to secure the future of the game here possibly, as some have opinioned, at the expense of super rugby. In my view they have to do this because they know that the local game cannot financially stand on its own and frankly as a live spectacle more often than not the games are a done deal before kick off. There are too many rules and too many opportunities for referees and TMO s to stop the game. Too often live crowds are sitting watching nothing. Who wants to watch hookers scoring more tries than wingers? Until the game is, for example, rid of legalised obstruction at the rolling maul which seems to be the aim for every pro team and the game is played wider with no fear of playing with the ball in your half in case the ref spots some minor technical indiscretion, teams will continue to scrum for a penalty, kick for the corner and rolling maul it. Who wants to watch that? That is why no one is going to games - because the viewing experience is rubbish irrespective of whether a couple of All Blacks are playing or not. The NZRU need to get their big boy pants on and do something about the rules.
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