Michele Verroken, UK Sport’s head of anti-doping, said: “The level of refusal of testing, in this case, was unprecedented and we were very aware that this presented quite a challenge for the governing body. We are very pleased at the way the WRU dealt with this matter.”However, Penygraig have accused the Union of over-reacting to their test refusal. In a statement released after the hearing, the club said: “The players and Hon Secretary consider that having regard to the mitigation put forward, which the panel accepted was ‘powerful’, the penalties imposed are unduly harsh.”An appeal against these penalties will be lodged within the time limit specified in the appropriate regulations.”The case against three other players was adjourned after two denied the charges, and another is considering his position. However, the case against the former Penygraig chairman, Neil Roper, was withdrawn.No criminal charges have been brought so far, although the police said they would follow proceedings to determine “whether any other issues arise out of it.”. Among items on the agenda at the International Tennis Federation’s Science and Technology Congress in London this week was “Tennis and the Modern Racket: small is beautiful?”

Among items on the agenda at the International Tennis Federation’s Science and Technology Congress in London this week was “Tennis and the Modern Racket: small is beautiful?”
The debate was prompted by a group of former players and professional observers who fear that the attacking style of serve-and-volley will disappear in a deluge of passing shots from the baseline unless the width of racket heads is reduced from 12.5 inches to nine inches.Top-spin seemed rife in the quest for a sweet spot of consensus.

The governing body warned that “tinkering with the natural cycles in our sport would cause more harm than good”, and the manufacturers, whose baseline is profit, fretted about a change that would require the risk of investment and questioned the wisdom of producing smaller rackets for professionals and making the power-generating wide bodies for recreational players.Point taken. But is it possible that the generation-spanning “small is beautiful” campaigners – including John McEnroe, Boris Becker, Pat Cash, Ilie Nastase, Stan Smith, Neale Fraser, Fred Stolle, Guillermo Vilas, Martina Navratilova, Ann Jones, Angela Mortimer and Sue Barker – can all be wrong?. The NHS was practically moribund when Labour won power in 1997 but the Blair Government delayed for two years before attempting emergency resuscitation. It has since ordered the largest injection of funds in the NHS’s history and launched a recovery plan that would make Aneurin Bevan’s eyes gleam with envy But that initial delay could prove fatal.

The big question now is: can the NHS deliver before ministerial and public patience runs out?

The NHS was practically moribund when Labour won power in 1997 but the Blair Government delayed for two years before attempting emergency resuscitation. How modest that seems now, yet it took a huge effort and hundreds of millions of pounds to achieve. The new, far more ambitious, target is that no one should wait more than six months for treatment by March 2005. As there were 228,000 patients who had been waiting more than six months at the end of January, that will require an enormous increase in NHS productivity which has not, so far, been rising fast enough.The biggest problem facing the health service is not, any longer, money It is staff and capacity. There are not enough doctors and nurses, and not enough surgeries, clinics and hospitals. The Government has embarked on a major recruitment drive and a huge hospital building programme funded by the private finance initiative. They are starting to deliver but it takes 15 years to train a hospital consultant and time is not on the Government’s side.The project to save the NHS began in earnest with the launch of the NHS Plan in July 2000, a hugely ambitious document which contained radical proposals for modernising heart, cancer and other services.Tony Blair took personal charge of the plan and endlessly repeated the mantra “no investment without modernisation”.