Seven GAA county teams have had to pay the cost for missing drug tests in 2013. All Ireland champions Clare, Cork, Tipperary, Galway and Limerick hurlers are among those to have missed the tests, as revealed by the Irish Examiner today.
The Kildare and Donegal football teams are the other two teams who have had to the pay the costs of holding tests after they were on absent on the day testers from the Irish Sports Council arrived.
The fines totalled to €4,784, with Cork paying the highest amount, at €791.
Cork's training on the day in questioned had been cancelled while Davy Fitzgerald told the Examiner that a last minute change of training venue was the reasoning behind both their missed tests:
We have no problem in cooperating with anything, but our venues change at different times. We have taken rakes of drug tests and all of them have been okay. We now have a fella who communicates with the Irish Sports Council all the time to ensure they know where we are and where we will be. Any time they want they’re welcome to come and test us. I am totally against performance-enhancing drugs.
John Fogarty of the Examiner spoke to Newstalk this morning to further discuss the reasoning behind GAA teams missing drug tests. You can listen from 30mins 30secs in below.
