Two-year ban for using P

Manawatu¯ Cyclones player Aroha Nuku has been banned from rugby for two years after testing positive to methamphetamine.

Nuku claims to have thought she was taking Ritalin to help keep her awake on her drive home from training, a claim backed up by one of her team-mates.

She was facing a ban of four years, but a New Zealand Rugby judicial committee accepted that her use of methamphetamine was not intentional under its drugs rule, so imposed a two-year ban.

However, Drug Free Sport New Zealand chief executive Nick Paterson said Nuku was reckless in taking the unknown substance. Ritalin itself is also prohibited in sport.

Nuku had admitted the breach and NZR announced her ban yesterday.

The charge resulted from a failed routine drug test taken after Nuku played for the Cyclones in their round four match of the Farah Palmer Cup against Waikato on September 22 last year.

That test revealed that both her A and B samples were positive for methamphetamine and D-amphetamine/Dextroamphetamine.

Nuku said she took a powder that a teammate told her was Ritalin to help keep her awake on a 21⁄ hour drive home to Hawera after training in Palmerston North.

The judicial committee found that despite some misgivings, it accepted Nuku’s evidence about how the banned substances came to be present in the drug test.

Nuku’s ban from rugby was backdated to begin from September 22, 2017.