More than half the players involved in next year's World Cup will be drug-tested as soon as they arrive in Australia as part of the International Rugby Board's tough new anti-doping strategy.

In addition, four players will be tested after each match, double the usual number, and anyone found guilty of using an illegal substance will be given a minimum two-year suspension from the game if it is a first offence with a life ban facing those with a record.

The IRB appointed its first anti-doping manager earlier this month, the 30-year-old Australian Tim Ricketts who coordinated the drug-testing at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

"We adopted the Olympic regulations for the 1999 World Cup and they are pretty tight," said an IRB source last night. "Next year we will be even tougher and we can guarantee that a significant percentage of the players taking part in the tournament will be tested, several of them before a ball has been kicked. Anyone who breaks the regulations regarding illegal substances is more likely to be found out than not: it will not be a risk worth taking."

The IRB is currently investigating the case of the Australia wing Ben Tune after it emerged that he was given an illegal substance last year through his club to help ease an arthritic condition.

An independent tribunal set up by the Australian Rugby Union last week decided to take no action against Tune after ruling that he had had no idea the medication he had been given was on the IRB's banned list.

The board has the power to take action against the player and the ARU. It has been sent all the documentation on the case and its medical advisory committee is expected to consider the issue by the end of the month. It has the power to convene an independent panel to consider the case.

One member of that committee, the South African Dr Ismael Jakoet, last week said that Tune should be banned because the regulations did not discriminate between intent and an unwitting contravention, a contribution that generated an angry response from the ARU chief executive John O'Neill, who labelled it "a hateful and ignorant attack".

O'Neill could find himself in the dock along with Tune because the IRB wants to know why it was not told about the problem a year ago. Board rules dictate that all cases involving players and illegal substances be referred to it but the Tune affair was kept quiet: he was rested from four of the Queensland Reds' Super 12 matches on the grounds he was injured.

The matter came to light only through a newspaper earlier this summer and it remains unclear whether the ARU or the Queensland Rugby Union deliberately kept the matter quiet. Whichever, the ARU could find sanctions being taken against it, ranging from a heavy fine to a demand that disciplinary action be taken against one or more of its officials. It is not in danger of being stripped of the right to stage the 2003 World Cup.

The ARU justified the decision not to ban Tune by saying that the drug - probenecid - was administered for therapeutic rather than performance-enhancing purposes. The Reds' doctor last year, Greg Smith, called on the IRB to review its anti-doping policy, saying that sports such as rugby league and Australian rules were more flexible when it came to banned substances which were administered for their healing properties. "It should be a case of patients first and athletes second," he said.

The IRB has ruled that the former Wales full-back Shane Howarth, who was banned from international rugby after being snared in the Grannygate saga two years ago, should not be allowed to play for his adopted country again because he appeared for the All Blacks in 1994. Howarth said last night he was considering an appeal.