Eddie McGuire Is Worried The Interchange Cap Could Drive Players To Use Performance Enhancing Drugs

'We gotta be careful'


Article heading image for Eddie McGuire Is Worried The Interchange Cap Could Drive Players To Use Performance Enhancing Drugs

Image: The Hot Breakfast

Eddie McGuire is worried that interchange restrictions will force players into taking performance enhancing drugs.

Speaking on The Hot Breakfast this morning, Ed said he initially raised these concerns when the cap was introduced and that the situation hasn’t changed.

Listen to Ed's thoughts here:

“When the AFL brought in the limitations on the interchange, to me the first thing I said at the president’s meeting — I said it publicly there and I’ll say it again — was ‘you’re gonna drive people into looking at taking EPO,’ Ed said.

EPO is a peptide that increases red blood cell production and is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

“Now of course when I said that everyone went nuts… that was always a big issue for me.

“I don’t think it’s happened, but I still think you gotta be careful when you’re driving athletes into a position where they’re thinking ‘how can I get fitter?’ when there’s nowhere else to go, when you’ve slept in an oxygen tent, when you’re not drinking, when your skinfolds are down, you’re still gasping for air, your tongue’s hanging out at the 10 minute mark of the last quarter and the coach is saying ‘get on and run’.

“They’re the things that you look at and say geeze, we gotta be careful, keep our game as natural as possible and then you mitigate the circumstances as much as possible.

Ed said that footy’s relatively small stage means that the the governing body can be as hard as it wants on drugs.

“We’re in a position with footy where we don’t need to play on the international level,” he said.

“We can be as hard as we want to about drugs in footy, and I think the AFL do a pretty good job but I’d toughen up even further.”

7 December 2017




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