We tend to think of cheating in sport as a relatively recent phenomenon – the sort of thing that never used to happen in the good old days – but, according to Professor Aidan Moran, from the School of Psychology at UCD, cheating is as old as sport itself. It's been shown, he told Sean O'Rourke by way of example, that cyclists in the 1890s took caffeine and cocaine to improve their performance.
Last week, Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova returned to the court following a 15-month ban for unintentionally taking meldonium, a banned substance. Throughout her ban, she denied any wilful wrongdoing. If it's true that Sharapova didn't knowingly attempt to boost her performance – and the tribunal of the International Tennis Federation accepted that she had taken the substance inadvertently – then was she really guilty of cheating?
Aidan Moran is the co-author, with John Toner, of A Critical Introduction to Sports Psychology. He outlined what he sees as the difference between cheating and gamesmanship.
"Cheating is acting dishonestly, breaking the rules, to gain an unfair advantage over one's opponents, but gamesmanship is bending the rules."
Sean was also joined by GAA pundit Joe Brolly, who's been outspoken about cheating and gamesmanship in sport for a number of years. Following his own outburst on the subject during the 2013 All-Ireland Football quarter final between Monaghan and Tyrone, he believed that changes would be introduced, but nothing substantial has materialised, he says, which he puts down to the inactivity of the GAA.
"It's become absolutely systematic now."
According to Brolly, we used to be able to look at soccer and say that wouldn't happen in Gaelic Games, but now it's become "par for the course". He believes that the GAA needs to act now on cynical fouling, just as rugby has done.
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