Testers threaten to drop football

That experience has been central to UK Sport's decision to look at the possibility of dropping football from the testing programme.

Sportsmail has obtained a UK Sport internal discussion document, entitled 'Business plan for 2005 to 2009', which asks: 'Should we just do public interest testing or commercial as well?' The document has been drawn up by Janet Carter, in charge of the testing programme with John Scott in the absence of Michele Verroken, who is on 'gardening leave'.

A spokesman for UK Sport last night confirmed that 'nothing is being ruled out'.

A source said: 'The question on everyone's minds at UK Sport is whether football should be dropped, along with sports like cricket, rugby league and rugby union.'

Last year the Jockey Club controversially split with UK Sport and set up their own testing programme with a private company,

and the controversy that surrounded the Ferdinand affair has certainly raised concerns.

Not only was the conduct of the UK Sport testers called into question on that infamous day at Manchester United's training ground, but the highly-respected Verroken was unfairly accused, in some circles, of leaking Ferdinand's name.

Until recently, the American doping programme did not deal with the major sports in the U.S. because of the threat of litigation, and the Ferdinand affair sparked similar worries at UK Sport.

If UK Sport drop sports such as football from their drug testing programme, the Football Association would be left with no option but to follow the Jockey Club and set up their own self-regulatory system. That would raise concerns at a time when FA chief executive Mark Palios is determined to step up the fight against drugs.

FIFA, who have just agreed to adopt the World Anti-Doping Agency's code, would certainly be opposed to the idea of a system that would be so open to abuse.

The Government have also voiced their support for the agency, and recently increased UK Sport's funding for their drug programme from ? 1.6million to ? 2.9m. For that reason, Sports Minister Richard Caborn may not agree with the idea of dropping football and other professional sports.

If football remains under the umbrella of UK Sport, the FA would almost certainly be asked to cover all the costs of the 1,200 tests that are conducted every year. Each test costs around ?300, with the FA paying roughly 75 per cent of the ?360,000 annual bill.

Extra money, however, is not the main issue for UK Sport. Officials are increasingly dismayed by the difficulties they are encountering in running testing programmes for commercial sports like football and might well conclude that it would be in their interests to distance themselves from potential problems in the future.

The discussion document certainly points towards adopting such a policy, the suggestion being that UK Sport will 'continue commercial testing for a defined period and then cease in order to give sports time to find or set up their own alternative systems'.