Rassie Erasmus has no issue facing Racing 92 trio
French champions Racing will go into their home Pool 1 opener having come under unwanted scrutiny following the leaking of positive dope test results for Test stars Dan Carter, Joe Rokocoko and Juan Imhoff.
The trio, two former All Blacks and current Argentine wing Imhoff on Wednesday attended a French Rugby Federation anti-doping hearing following reports they tested positive for banned drug corticosteroids following June’s Top 14 final victory in Barcelona.
Racing have denied their players breached anti-doping rules or that they had therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) for “anomalous” drugs tests, insisting the issue related to “treatment by an authorised channel”.
The controversy does not appear to have affected the Parisian club, which last weekend edged a Top14 derby with cross-town rivals Stade Francais with both Imhoff and Rokocoko in their starting line-up.
Fly-half Carter sat out the game with a calf injury and is a doubt to face Munster at Stade Yves du Manoir this weekend but the Irish province’s director of rugby said he was comfortable with any of the players in question lining out against his team.
“I know Dan Carter for a long time, I have coached against him and played against him,” former Springbok flanker Erasmus said yesterday. “He is such an icon and I would never say anything bad about him. I have no problem in the other two players involved in this match. Let justice take its course.”
Erasmus said he had no idea how a similar situation would affect his preparations for a match but promised it would have no bearing on how Munster would approach the game.
“I guess only if you are on the inside of that situation, then you will know how it might affect you. It is impossible for me to put myself in that situation because I don’t know what is going on in their club. It depends on what has happened and I don’t know what has happened there.
“We see it in the newspapers but it is so out of our control and it shouldn’t have any influence. It is something internal to them and now it is in the newspapers. That’s exactly what it is. I wouldn’t even think about it. And I would be disappointed if any of our players were thinking about it.”
Erasmus last week suggested that in a Champions Cup pool also featuring Leicester Tigers and Glasgow Warriors it would be Munster who were viewed as the weak link in the qualifying group but yesterday the South African said he did not expect his players to be underestimated by Racing, particularly with a coaching set-up featuring Ronan O’Gara.
“They will probably look at us, and look at us and the pool, and for them there is not a lot of easy games as well. They will think where will be the easy pickings and hopefully they don’t think we are the easy pickings.
“But I think just how we finished and how we came into the competition (in the last PRO12 qualifying place), that will be the natural way to think about it.
“I don’t think there will be disrespect between us and them or lack of respect for the quality in both teams.
“They probably think we probably should be the easiest team (in the pool) and that’s not to say that we will be the easy team. They have got a great team, they have got brilliant players and a great coaching staff with a great history with what they achieved last year in both competitions. We are in for a massive game, and luckily for us it’s an away game so nobody expects us to do well there.”
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