South African rugby’s drug-testing decline casts cloud over World Cup wins

But, despite this, testing in the country dropped markedly after the Springboks retained the World Cup in 2023.

According to figures published by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), the number of tests carried out within rugby by the South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport (Saids) fell from 785 in 2015 to just 127 in 2024.

Over the same period, the equivalent number of tests conducted by UK Anti-Doping (Ukad) rose by almost 25% from 998 to 1241.

Hours after South Africa won their final warm-up match for the 2019 World Cup, former Ireland and British & Irish Lions flanker Stephen Ferris posted a photograph on social media. It showed the Springboks squad posing for a picture in what looked like a gym, each stripped to his shorts and parading a physique of which the Incredible Hulk would be proud.

The overwhelming response on social media was that these physiques must have been attained through some sort of doping.

And those accusations were not entirely baseless. Just a month before the photograph was taken, it was revealed that Aphiwe Dyantyi, the South Africa winger, tested positive for an unspecified banned substance during a Springbok training camp.

Dyantyi was the 2018 World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year and a certainty to make the World Cup squad, had he not failed the test. He was later banned for four years.

South Africa went on to win that World Cup, beating England in the final, but it was not until years later that two players in the now infamous picture would fail tests.

On the eve of the 2023 tournament, it emerged that Jantjies had failed a drugs test days after being recalled to South Africa’s squad for that year’s Rugby Championship. He contested the failed test, just as Dyantyi did, and was also ultimately banned for four years.

It then emerged that Jantjies’ World Cup-winning team-mate, Nkosi, had failed a World Rugby drugs test in May of 2024 and, by September, had admitted doping and was banned for three years.

Last August, South Africa’s rugby union confirmed prop Ntlabakanye had failed a drugs test in a statement proclaiming his innocence over a “non-performance-enhancing substance”. It said the substance “was prescribed by a specialist physician in early 2025 for medical reasons and taken with the approval and the supervision of a doctor specifically appointed to manage the medical affairs of professional rugby players”.

Ntlabakanye was not provisionally suspended pending a hearing later this month and played for the Springboks in their 73-0 whitewash of Wales in November.

What has not been known until now is that those failed drug tests occurred amid a sixfold decrease in those carried out in South Africa in the past decade.

This raises questions about whether any players might have avoided detection while the Springboks were on their way to winning back-to-back World Cups and Rugby Championships, and a test series against the British & Irish Lions in 2021.

The Springboks are renowned for their intense physicality and ability to overwhelm opponents. But South African rugby has been plagued by doping scandals ever since the game turned professional.

Even one of the 20th century’s most iconic sporting moments, the Springboks’ 1995 World Cup win, became somewhat tainted four years later when legendary captain Francois Pienaar admitted in his autobiography that he had taken performance-boosting stimulants during his country’s apartheid-driven exile from the test stage.

By the time Pienaar made his confession, Johan Ackermann – now a prominent coach in the game – had become the first South Africa player in the professional era to be banned for doping after admitting taking nandrolone to aid his recovery from a knee injury. Upon returning from his suspension, he went on to be a part of the Springboks’ triumphant 2007 World Cup squad.

In 2000, South Africa prop Cobus Visagie was banned for two years after also testing positive for nandrolone he claimed came from a contaminated supplement provided by the then South African Rugby Football Union. He was cleared the following year over “irregularities in the laboratory analytical/testing procedure” after appealing against his suspension.

It would be almost another decade before the country’s next drug scandal – courtesy of a crackdown on doping among those dreaming of becoming the next generation of Springboks.

Craven Week is an annual, week-long schoolboy competition shown live on national television and famed for unearthing rugby stars of the future.

In 2010, the event was rocked after three players were banned for failing drug tests. One was Johan Goosen, who was suspended for three months just four days after being named Craven Week Player of the Year.

Goosen, who went on to play for the Springboks after serving his ban, was ruled to have been negligent after saying he had unwittingly taken a contaminated supplement.

Over the next 13 years, the positive tests kept coming during Craven Week, despite an education programme in schools in the build-up and the South African Rugby Union pledging to increase testing of junior players.

The day after Goosen’s 2010 suspension, South Africa – then reigning world champions and Lions series winners – beat Ireland in an autumn international in Dublin. After the game, the two Springboks chosen randomly for doping control, Chiliboy Ralepelle and Bjorn Basson, tested positive for a banned stimulant.

Although Ralepelle and Basson were sent home and provisionally suspended, their positive tests were traced to a supplement that had been given to all South Africa players and the pair escaped with a reprimand.

Hailing the verdict, Ralepelle said: “Finally, the facts are out there, and people can see that we were not guilty and are not doping cheats.”

Those words came back to haunt the hooker in the next decade after he failed another two tests, in 2014 and 2019, and was banned for two and eight years, respectively. He continued to maintain his innocence.

Sandwiched between Ralepelle’s bans were suspensions for Gerbrandt Grobler, in 2015, and Ashley Johnson in 2018. Grobler, who never played for the Springboks but did later join Munster and Gloucester, was punished after admitting taking steroids to aid his recovery from an injury.

Johnson was banned after failing a drugs test while with Wasps, saying he mistakenly took his wife’s dietary supplement – a fat-burner called “The Secret” that had been bought in South Africa.

This is all before the Dyanti, Jantjies, Nkosi and Ntlabakanye incidents, and coincided with a precipitous fall in testing in South Africa, raising questions from schoolboy to test level.

Ross Tucker, a South African-based sports scientist and a research consultant for World Rugby, said the drop exposed by the Telegraph was “not good”, adding: “It’s a shame because there was a time – 10, 15 years ago – when the South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport was really aggressive with its testing and it was on the front foot.”

The Wada figures also show Saids carried out only 66 tests on rugby players the year after the Springboks overpowered England in the 2019 World Cup final, as well as 99 the year of the 2021 Lions tour. That was during the Covid-19 crisis, which had a major impact on drug-testing worldwide, although Ukad conducted 817 and 985 tests, respectively, over the same period.

Khalid Galant, the chief executive of Saids, blamed the most recent slump on the suspension in March 2024 of Africa’s only Wada-accredited anti-doping laboratory, which had its right to analyse samples revoked entirely in May last year because of its “inability to satisfactorily address multiple non-conformities against the International Standard for Laboratories”.

The Bloemfontein lab had previously been sanctioned by Wada between May 2016 and September 2018, which coincided with a fall of two-thirds in the number of tests carried out by Saids from 785 to 266 annually.

The latest revocation has forced Saids to send samples to be tested either in Doha, Qatar, or Gent, Belgium, increasing its costs at a time Galant said its grant from the South African government had been “fairly static”. He said the country’s rugby union had, in recent years, provided an annual ex-gratia payment towards testing of just 150,000 rand (NZ$15,670).

The sixfold decrease in testing between 2015-24 also meant rugby went from accounting for almost 30% of Said tests across all sport to just 12%, something Galant admitted was “not ideal” and was down to covering “all the sports codes that need to be tested”.

He said he was “implementing a sponsorship revenue strategy in 2026 to address our shortfalls from the government grant, especially around testing”.

Saids refused to disclose the number of tests it carried out within rugby in 2025 ahead of publication of the data by Wada in December, or in its own annual report in the autumn.

When asked about the Telegraph’s report, South Africa’s head coach Rassie Erasmus said: “I want to answer that so you don’t think I am running away from a question [but] I haven’t seen the data or the publication of the actual facts. I would not know how much they test and I wouldn’t be able to comment on any of that.”

The top South African players are also subject to drug-testing by World Rugby, which refused to disclose how many tests it had conducted on such players in the past decade, arguing it risked compromising its intelligence-led anti-doping activities.

But, according to Wada, World Rugby carried out 2182 tests worldwide in 2024, the lowest number since 2015 outside the Covid-19 years (2020-21).

A World Rugby spokesperson said: “South African players, alongside many other nations, will be in our testing pool so we test them all year round, including out of competition. Our out-of-competition testing includes home visits.

“Players will also be tested by us at Rugby World Cup, European Professional Club Rugby competitions if they play in them and as part of [what was] the autumn international series.

“Lab issues in South Africa have occurred before and where we face those issues in that country or any other, samples are shipped overseas, which is established and acceptable, provided shipment follows Wada guidelines.”

– Telegraph