Steve Meehan has had a lot on his plate this week. First there was the thumping Bath took at Leicester on Saturday, ending a winning run that had suggested a place in the play-offs was possible. Then on Wednesday the club were sold lock-stock-and-barrel.
Sandwiched between the two, and making a lot less of a stir, came Monday's announcement from the Rugby Football Union that a new drugs policy is on the way and while Meehan has not read what it means in detail, Bath's director of rugby understands enough to know he likes what is being proposed. Basically, it increases out-of-competition testing for recreational drugs such as cocaine, cannabis, amphetamines and ecstasy – the kind of stuff that so undermined Bath on two occasions last year – while allowing players one chance to put things right before they have the book thrown at them.
"Rather than one strike and you're out, you get two chances," Meehan says. "Had that policy been in place a while ago we might still have three or four senior players at the club. They may not have gone through the anguish that they have."
Those players are Matt Stevens, an England international and a Lion now running a fashionable coffee shop while he completes a two-year ban after admitting a cocaine habit, and Michael Lipman, Alex Crockett and Andrew Higgins, three players against whom charges of drug-taking were dropped but who were still banned because they refused to be tested during the club's inquiry into what had happened at its end of season party in May.
Such was the fallout – Bath's Australian lock Justin Harrison left his contract early but was later banned after admitting taking cocaine at the party – that the club struggled at the start of the season. Up to Christmas they had barely won a game, slumped to second from bottom of the Premiership and limped out of Europe. Meehan said at the time that it felt as though they were being "punished".
On Wednesday Andrew Brownsword, the club's owner for 14 years, denied that the drugs issue was a factor in the sale, but at the time he did admit to being very angry. According to someone close to Brownsword in those days, it was that anger that drove the club investigation that in turn led to Twickenham becoming involved and, ultimately, the new policy being brought in.
"He wasn't angry with those who are here," says Meehan, dismissing suggestions that his job was ever on the line as Bath's form evaporated. "He supported those who were here and wanted to lift the team. He's been very supportive of me since I arrived."
Under the Twickenham proposal, positive tests will be made public only if a player is caught a second time in out-of-competition testing. The rules covering match-day testing are not affected, but under the new system only the player, the medical director of the programme, Dr Simon Kemp, the RFU's head of sports medicine and the chief medical officer of the player's club will be made aware of the first positive. Even head coaches such as Meehan will be out of the loop. It is anticipated that in the vast majority of cases that will be the end of the matter with the player accepting a fine that could be £5,000 for a senior professional or £1,000 for an academy member plus a mandatory course of treatment.
Looking back at the Stevens case and what the prop said at the time, it is easy to see how the new format might have helped. "Your body goes through a lot of physical trauma and most people deal with it very well," Stevens said. "Most of the guys I've played with at Bath and all of the guys I've played with for England deal with the pressures and the physicality of rugby really well. They are true professionals. I just didn't deal with it very well.
"I'd had such high standards and I wasn't reaching them. There were also some major personal issues and one way I dealt with it all was to seek oblivion, try to escape. I did that by getting very drunk and taking cocaine, which gave me a release. The ironic thing about it was that I would do it, then spend the whole week hating myself for doing it and play badly, because I'd done it. Then I would do it again because I hadn't played well. There was lot of self-loathing and it was a vicious circle."
Twickenham borrowed heavily from Aussie Rules in forming its policy, with one of those involved saying it was Australian input that suggested initial anonymity if players were to buy-in to the project. "The rate of positives has gone down and down and down and at the same time the value systems we put in place over here at the start of the season have been put in place at the clubs over there," says Meehan, a Queenslander who has seen how similar drug controls have worked in Australia. "Some people might say it's the soft option, but people make mistakes and if we can help them that's surely a good thing."
Meehan has also been round long enough with clubs such as the Queensland Reds and Stade Français to understand why players sometimes turn to recreational drugs in the way alcohol was once turned to on a Saturday night, and possibly even a Sunday night, as balm to take away the pain of an increasingly physical sport. "I've often described it as a car accident every weekend," the head coach says. "If people had the opportunity to walk into a dressing room, any team's dressing room after any given Saturday, and see the guys laying there on the doctor's bed getting stitched up, ice all around them, struggling to get up from the bench into the shower, they'd understand. And if they saw them again on a Sunday morning in some cases it's even worse.
"But the drugs issue isn't just rugby, it's society wide. So we are in a position now, through the Premiership, where someone's career is not completely ruined. In fact it can be saved, and not just their rugby career, so it's worth having a go at."
