Rugby Union: Truscott receives two-year ban: Punishment may force South African towards early retirement
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Your support makes all the difference.ANDRIES TRUSCOTT, the Northern Transvaal and former South African hooker, has been banned from the game for two years by a New Zealand Rugby Football Union tribunal.
Truscott's ban will last until July 1995, and is a result of his testing positive for the use of the banned stimulant, Prolintane, in the Northern Transvaal match against North Harbour in Auckland on 7 May.
The Wellington Evening Post newspaper said Truscott would decide next week whether he would challenge the ban in a South African court. If he does not, the 25-year-old says he will retire.
Truscott has said he had taken the drug for a knee injury and had been told by medical experts that this would not have assisted his performance.
Truscott was heir apparent to the South African hooker, Uli Schmidt, and would have been in Australia with the South African team - who take on the world champions in Sydney today in the opening match of a three-Test series - if he had not tested positive.
The New South Wales Rugby Union will take no action on an incident in South Africa's tour match with NSW here last weekend which left the tourists' captain, Francois Pienaar, with facial cuts.
'I had a look at the video and the view of the union is that the matter was dealt with by the referee,' David Moffett, the union executive director, said. 'We see no reason to take the matter further.'
Va'aiga Tuigamala, the All Black winger, has been offered a 'spectacular deal' in Rugby League but still has to decide whether he wants to switch codes, according to the British agent, David McKnight.
Wales meet Canada under the National Ground floodlights in Cardiff on Wednesday, 10 November, in a match being billed as a crucial part of their preparations for the Five Nations' Championship.
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