Bermuda rugby player Antonio Perinchief is waiting to find out if the World Anti-Doping Authority (Wada) is going to appeal his overturned suspension for failing a random drugs test.

Perinchief tested positive for the anabolic steroid Clenbuterol, which is considered a performance enhancing drug, while representing Bermuda at the Central America and Caribbean Games and Nacra Sevens tournament in Mexico at the end of last year.

Originally banned in January from all forms of the game by World Rugby for two years, Perinchief was forced to miss the end of the domestic season and at least one international tournament as a result.

The suspension was finally overturned after Adam Richards, the Bermuda Rugby Football Union’s lawyer, successfully appealed the ruling by showing that the positive test from December 3 was the result of eating contaminated meat while in Central America.

Used to promote growth of skeletal muscle and reduce body fat in athletes, farmers in Mexico are notorious for using Clenbuterol on their cattle to produce leaner beef.

In a judgment sent to the BRFU on June 30, World Rugby’s board judicial committee accepted the argument and ruled that Perinchief was “not at fault or negligent. Therefore the otherwise appropriate period of ineligibility of two years is eliminated in its entirety”.

Wada has 21 days to appeal World Rugby’s decision, although given that it has previously ignored hundreds of cases of positive tests for Clenbuterol in Mexico, Perinchief might consider himself to be extremely unfortunate were the drugs body to pursue him.

There is also the testimony from the director of Wada’s own drug testing facility in Montreal, Professor Christiane Ayotte, who wrote in an e-mail that, “in Mexico the contamination of meat is a real and recognised problem. So there is a high probability that the presence of clenbuterol [in Perinchief’s sample] is a consequence [of that].”

The BRFU might argue that Perinchief, who missed seven months of rugby as a result of the suspension, was unlucky to have been banned in the first place.

His was the first case of its kind that World Rugby prosecuted, with the governing body readily acknowledging that there is a problem with contaminated meat in Mexico. The organisation has even gone as far as advising athletes not to eat meat when they are in the country.

Although this information is available on World Rugby’s website, it is not prominent and the Mexican Rugby Union, who hosted the Nacra tournament, told the BRFU they were unaware of ‘World Rugby’s guidance about the risks of Clenbuterol’.

Perinchief’s case might have been further strengthened by the fact that he passed a drugs test in Bermuda prior to arriving in Mexico.

However, the Bermuda Sport Anti-Doping Authority tested only for recreational drugs and does not keep urine samples for further testing. As such, there was no way to prove that the drug was not in Perinchief’s system before he arrived with the team.

In response to a series of questions regarding its testing procedures and what warnings, if any, are given to the Island’s athletes about the risks of contaminated food, Bsada said it could not comment while Wada still had the right to appeal.

Ultimately, it took six months of hard work, research and determination on the part of Richards and union official Jonathan Cassidy to clear a player they knew to be “100 per cent the victim of some very unfortunate circumstances.”

Work that was necessary because Wada consider athletes with positive tests to be guilty until proven innocent.

Athletes are held personally responsible for what goes into their bodies, and according to the anti-doping regulations it is not “necessary that intent, fault, negligence or knowing use on the player’s part be demonstrated in order to establish an anti-doping rule violation.”

While Richards is disappointed that World Rugby pursued the case in the first place, he believes it does serve as a warning to all athletes attending events in Mexico.

“It could have been me, it could have been JC [Cassidy] it could have been any one of the team,” Richards said.

Cassidy agreed: “The whole team, save for one meal, ate together. There are guys on that team that would have lost their jobs or been kicked off the Island as a result of a similar positive test.”