Codes and Policies

Good nutrition and healthy eating play a crucial role in keeping a participant healthy and enhancing sporting performance. Eating the right foods at the right time is vital in enhancing performance. This can be achieved by following a nutrition program which is developed by an accredited sports dietitian. The Sports Dietitians Australia website has a number of useful resources including factsheets and recipes to help with your choice of food and details to assist in finding an accredited dietitian. Rugby Australia has developed a Supplement Policy to provide useful information around the appropriate use of supplements if required to support a nutrition program.

The Rugby AU Sports Supplement Policy applies to all professional players and can be downloaded here.

Sport Integrity Australia (formerly ASADA) report that supplements are one of the leading causes of failed anti-doping tests in Australia with approximately one athlete testing positive every month. Supplements may include prohibited substances that have been purposefully added during the manufacturing process (and may or may not be listed on the ingredients label) or they may include prohibited substances as a result of contamination during the manufacturing process. It is therefore important to seek professional advice if you are using or intend to use supplements and only use products that have been batch tested.

HASTA and INFORMED SPORT are independent companies that test supplements for WADA prohibited substances. You should only choose INFORMED SPORT or HASTA certified supplements. 

This can be done by looking for their logos and using their websites to search for and check the status of products. Both the HASTA and Informed sport websites set out the certified batch that have been tested and it is important that you check this as there can be variations between batches of the same product.

Global DRO allows you to check the prohibited or non-prohibited status of ingredients listed on the supplement label in a supplement. (Please note that this does not guarantee that the supplement is 100% free from prohibited substances as the product may have been contaminated or could contain prohibited ingredients that are not on the product label.)

Please access the Sports Integrity Australia Supplements page for more information.