Eifion Lewis Roberts, the prop for the Aviva Premiership Rugby Football Union club the Sale Sharks could be slammed with a ban of two years after testing positive for the use of a performance enhancing drugs during his stint with the previous club Toulon last June.
According to the hugely French newspaper L’Equipe, Lewis Roberts tested positive for not only one, but two drugs, morphine and pseudoephedrine and his urine B-sample also returned a positive result when random dope tests were conducted on the players during the Top 14 final clash between Toulouse and Toulon.
And despite the test coming almost seven months after the match, Lewis Roberts could be faced with a ban of two years, unless he can prove to the juries that the drugs that he used were not performance enhancing or were not used to enhance performance but for medical reasons, for that matter. The president of Toulon remained defiant in his stance amid claims from the media that the club promotes doping among its players by taking the side of the Welsh prop they signed from the Sale Sharks two years back.
According to the president, he doesn’t believe that Lewis Roberts is a person who would use drugs to enhance his performance and added that he must have taken them to relieve him of some pain. Toulon’s coach Bernard Laporte also appeared to be taken aback by the allegations against a player that he has a lot of admiration for.
He stated that he has worked with him for seven months and he is full of admiration for him. Lewis Roberts signed with the Sale Sharks back in 2005 and was a hugely popular figure at the club before signing for Toulon. But he quickly returned to the club last February in what was an emotional return.