Benetton’s rise can be good for the Pro14 says Macarthur
● But Glasgow Warriors hooker aims to bring Italian revival to an end on Friday
Glasgow Warriors will be hoping to put a stop to the mini Benetton Treviso revival as emphatically as possible at Scotstoun on Friday night, but hooker Pat Macarthur can’t deny that an Italian renaissance would only be good news for the Guinness Pro14 competition.
Treviso registered a second win on the bounce as they beat Ospreys 16-6 at home a week after they had stunned Edinburgh 20-17 at Myreside.
With Zebre, who are now coached by former Edinburgh boss Michael Bradley, thumping the struggling Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth, the last fortnight has been one in the eye for those who felt the Italian presence in the league was becoming untenable, especially following the introduction of the South Africans and talk of further expansion into North America.
Treviso and Aironi, who have since been replaced by Zebre, joined the Celtic set-up in 2010-11, with the former finishing above Glasgow in that season. Two years later Treviso enjoyed a best-ever seventh place finish, well above Edinburgh, but since then they and Zebre have languished in the bottom two slots, except last season when the Dragons split the pair in 11th spot.
In conversation with The Scotsman at last month’s Pro14 launch in Dublin, the tournament’s chief executive Martin Anayi was full of support for the Italian sides and expressed confidence that they could soon be making strides forward.
Anayi cited the financial backing of the Benetton family to Treviso, with a push to rename the club solely in the name of the global fashion brand this season. He also pointed to new Italy coach Conor O’shea’s prioritising of making the Guinness Pro14 teams more competitive as an important step towards improving the fortunes of the national side.
Friday’s visit to Scotstoun will shed some light on whether or not the recent Benetton bounce under Kiwi coach Kieran Crowley is a blip or the start of a genuine progress, but Macarthur is hopeful that the Italian side continues to thrive, once this weekend is over and done with.
“It’s good for the league, without a doubt,” said the 30-year-old hooker. “The more strength in depth and the more competition there is the better. It is the same with all teams getting better and progressing, you see that within Europe as well.”
Even when struggling for results, the Italian sides have always been relied upon to provide a demanding shift for opposition front rows and Macarthur has enjoyed a fair few ding-dong battles with them in his career. He insists Treviso’s recent form has certainly not come as a surprise to him.
“Not at all, I have stood here before and said that, as a frontrow forward, it is one of the toughest games of the year for me,” he said. “You know what you are going to get – you are
0 Benetton are on the up as they showed with a stunning 20-17 win over Edinburgh at Myreside. going to get a confrontational, hard team.
“It is an enjoyable game to play, you always walk off knowing you have played in a good game of rugby. It [them winning last two] does not surprise me, they have been pushing teams hard for the last couple of years.”
George Turner started in the No 2 jersey in last Friday’s win over Munster and, with Scotland man Fraser Brown back to fitness this week, the relentless competition for game time continues for Macarthur but it is something he is well used to.
“We have got a big squad, a strong squad. We want to be sure that whoever gets a chance to play in that jersey, there is a minimum standard that they have to play at,” he said.
“Then you can change the team and see a heightening in intensity because that is your chance to show how good you are and everybody wants to take their chance. That is brilliant that Fraser is back fit, it is the way that rugby progresses.
“It shows the progress over the last few years – if you think back over the last seven or eight years then the strength in depth was not there but now you are looking at three internationalist in one position fighting for the one spot and trying to show that they are the best in that position.
“Everyone goes out there to do that, knowing that if you are not performing to drawbacks then that plenty of others waiting to step up and the have their shot.” The World Anti-doping Agency has provisionally stopped France’s only accredited anti-doping laboratory from carrying out testing after a positive sample it analysed from a bodybuilder contaminated two other samples with traces of a steroid.
The indefinite suspension means France’s antidoping agency will have to send blood and urine samples abroad for testing, until the facility in the Paris suburb of Chatenaymalabry is re-accredited by WADA.
The French agency’s secretary general, Mathieu Teoran, said that it’s not clear when the suspension might be lifted.
The lab will be used for drug testing when Paris hosts the Olympic Games in 2024. It has previously been recognised for pioneering work in drug testing. It has never been suspended before, Teoran said. The problem originated with a batch of 80 samples taken from bodybuilders, he said. Many of the samples tested positive, and some were found to contain 17 different substances, he said.
One sample with a particularly high concentrations of a steroid – some 200 times higher than generally found in positive cases – left traces of the substance on a testing machine, which then contaminated two other samples, he said.
Such machines are rinsed between samples to prevent contamination. But the cleaning procedure wasn’t sufficient this time, he said. The lab detected the problem on Friday 25 August, and WADA was informed three days later, on the following Monday, he said. The fault has since been fixed and samples were analysed again. He said no athlete was wrongly punished because of the contamination.
“We re-analysed entire waves of samples to ensure that there were no other problems,” he said. “We think it’s resolved.”
The lab is now waiting for a WADA audit, he said.
A WADA statement said the lab’s accreditation was suspended because of “analytical issues”.