- Mar 25, 2013
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beatthatrat said:Benotti69 said:The Hitch said:arcus said:"Off the ball" have been strong about anti-doping, IMO.gooner said:Seppelt was on Off The Ball last night.
He received three legal warnings from the IAAF, one as recent as December 21.
http://www.newstalk.com/reader/47.305.363/62570/blog_list/
They have.
Though as they are a football programme, I do wonder if they would be quite so eager to give the voiceless a voice if their own heroes were being accused of doping.
That said, I am thankful that they do let people like Tucker and Kimmage be heard.
IIRC correctly they did discuss doping in Football a la Cascarino and Richie Sadler when he played for Millwall.
Yes OfftheBall have done well on cycling, IAAF (but ignored Sonia and Robert Heffernan's achievements so far), swimming, but not Rugby even though they talked to Benezech and Kimmage, as they dont ask O'Driscoll a presenter now on offtheball any hard questions.
Yeah I think they gave a bit of airtime to Wenger's hintings as well. All in all they're fairly clued in to clinic issues I'd say.
I don't think they'd see their role as investigating doping as much as highlighting those that do investigate it. The coincidence of Pat McQ, Emma O'Reilly, Kimmage and Walsh being Irish probably introduced a lot of their listenership to wider doping issues for the first time.
To be fair to OTB O'Sullivan and O'Driscoll are very very sacred cows in Ireland. As the man said, you come at the king, you'd best not miss!
I don't think Heffernan has done anything to merit being singled out (apart from competing in a riddled sport). He's fairly vocal on dopers I believe.
I felt Sonia could have spoken out a bit more at the height of her success. She probably got an easy time off the Irish media in that respect. Only as the years went on, did she start really talking about the Chinese dominance. You see it a bit now in her Irish Times column.
Heffernan was particularly vocal about the Ferrari client who costed him a bronze in the European Championships. Other than that, the media can't do much more in questioning him. The same for Derval O'Rourke who has been very outspoken at times. You have McKiernan and Fionnuala Britton in cross country. No media outlet is going to say just because you beat other doped runners, that means you must be too.