Sheffield United: Manager on beefed-up checks, football and performance enhancing drugs

Beginning on page 16, sandwiched in between instructions on how to react if a pyrotechnic is thrown onto the pitch and advice about social media, are a number of guidelines relating to anti-doping. They include how not to fall foul of the governing body’s ‘whereabouts’ system and a contacts list for organisations including UKAD and VADA who police this issue.

Events over the past week have served to remind that some sports have issues with performance enhancing drugs. The fall-out from Conor Benn’s positive test for clomifene continues to cast a shadow over boxing while Olympic sprinter CJ Ujah has been handed a ban under strict liability rules despite being cleared of deliberately ingesting Ostarine and S-23; two selective androgen receptor modulators, which have similar properties to anabolic steroids.

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Despite the material its governing body delivers to clubs such as United, Heckingbottom does not believe football is among them. Although some campaigners will disagree, the 44-year-old told The Star a number of factors, including increased testing and the fact it is a team rather than individual pursuit, count in the game’s favour.

“Nutrition is big now,” the United manager said ahead of tomorrow’s game against Blackpool, which could see his side stretch its lead at the top of the Championship table. “There’s huge focus on that and the education about things like this is there. Testing is much more commonplace and that makes players more aware.

“There was a period when social drugs, whatever you want to call them, were more prevalent. In our particular sport anyway. There’s so much education surrounding the matter now, though.”

“I think in team sports it’s ,” Heckingbottom continued, “Because if someone decided to take it, the advantage would be tiny.”

Ujah, whose violation saw fellow members of Great Britain’s 4X100 men’s relay team stripped of the silver medals they received in Tokyo last year, was found to have accidentally breached anti-doping rules after ordering a supplement from Amazon.

United, Heckingbottom explained, have measures in place to prevent similar breaches occurring at Bramall Lane although he accepts this does not extend to all clubs under the FA’s jurisdiction.

“There’s club doctors, checking every single medicine that comes in to see if it contains anything on the banned list,” he said. “Yes, there’s certain clubs that might not have the resources available to do all of that and players might have to do their own things (research) a bit more. Do they all know about stuff like batch-testing? Do they all know who to turn to to check or ask? I can’t answer that for others but it is here.”

Heckingbottom also suggested testing procedures have been beefed-up in recent years, with random checks taking place on a more regular basis.

“It’s definitely gone up,” he added. “The lads are used to seeing them (the testers) after games and at training, whereas in the past that wasn’t always the case. But they were still there, tested and you knew you could be tested.”

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