Steroids no laughing matter

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/06/2011 (5583 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There have been times, Doug Brown freely admits, that steroid use among some players in the CFL has been so blatantly obvious that it literally became a joke.

“There’d be a guy or two on every team that we would identify and we used to joke around — ‘I wonder what point of his steroid cycle he’ll be in when we play him’,” Brown said Wednesday.

“Some guys you could just look at them and their skin would be this reddish purple. And you’d be just like, ‘Wow — there are obviously some very unnatural things going on here.’ Hair-trigger tempers, all of it — it’s pretty identifiable.”

Brown, the longtime Winnipeg Blue Bombers defensive lineman, made the comments following Winnipeg Blue Bombers practice on Wednesday and just hours after the Hamilton Tiger-Cats cut long-snapper Jordan Matechuk following revelations he’d been arrested by U.S. border officials last week with large quantities of anabolic steroids.

Border officials say Matechuk told them he was en route to Tiger-Cats training camp when he was stopped on the American side of the border at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on May 31. Officials say a secondary inspection first turned up marijuana and then a more intensive search turned up large quantities of steroids.

The Tiger-Cats say Matechuk never informed them of his arrest and abruptly cut him yesterday morning after media reports on the incident. “We are deeply, deeply disappointed on two fronts: that a player faces such charges, and that the same player would keep such obviously important information from our organization,” Ticats coach Marcel Bellefeulle said in a prepared statement.

Matechuk played the last three seasons as a long-snapper for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats but will be familiar to Winnipeg football fans. The 25-year-old native of Yorkton, Sask., played football locally for the University of Manitoba Bisons and the Winnipeg Rifles. He was orginally signed by the Bombers in March 2007 as an undrafted free agent and spent time on the Bombers practice roster that year before signing with Hamilton for the 2008 season.

Brown remembered Matechuk. “He was definitely one of those avid fitness people. I think he was trying to dabble too in some of that MMA — mixed martial arts,” said Brown.

Bombers head coach Paul LaPolice pointed out that for the first time this season, CFL players will be drug-tested under a program that will see 25 per cent of the league’s players randomly tested.

“It’s not something I have seen as a league problem,” said LaPolice. “And it’d be foolish of me to speculate on one incident. But the best thing the league is doing as a whole is coming up with a drug policy and if there are isolated incidents handling them.”

Bombers offensive lineman Kelly Butler said he doesn’t like the way Matechuk’s arrest immediately casts suspicions on the whole league. “It’s always sad when something like this happens because that’s one man’s decision and it can cause a black eye for the whole league,” Butler said. “There are a lot of quality athletes in this league who are doing the right thing. As long as you work hard in the off-season, you don’t need any performance-enhancing drugs.

“I don’t do anything like that and I don’t know anyone on this team who does anything like that.”

Brown, the Bombers player representative, said first-time offenders under the new drug testing program will not be suspended or have their names released to the media, but will be directed to a drug program. “I voted for it, but I would like to see the punitive measures be more stringent,” said Brown. “But a lot of it has to do with the fact that supplements are not regulated in the States by the FDA and up to 30 per cent have ingredients that aren’t on the list.

“So there could be cases where someone might be negligent in what they’ve been ingesting, but they weren’t premeditated in trying to take steroids or whatever. I really think it should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

An ex-Ticat’s big laundry list

U.S. Border officials itemized the cache of illegal drugs and paraphanelia they say they seized May 31 after stopping Hamilton Tiger-Cats long-snapper Jordan Matechuk  at the border crossing at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

Here’s the list:

543 anabolic steroid pills

262 millitres of anabolic steroids in liquid form

1.25 grams of marijuana

19 syringes

51 replacement needles