The doping scandal that has erupted in Georgian and European rugby does not just leave a serious piece of news, but a sense of imposture, of repeating the same mistakes, of being stuck in the past, of a lack of values (in rugby!) and one question: what was the need? The absolute king of Rugby Europe, champion year after year and knocking on the door of a seven-nation Six Nations, has collapsed completely. The final blow came from Portugal last weekend when, in Leganés (Madrid), they won the European Championship final… the first serious match for Georgia after its sanction.

That is why the blow is even greater. The joint investigation by WADA and World Rugby, named ‘Operation Obsidian’, confirmed anti-doping rule violations by six players and one member of the support staff of the Georgia men’s national team. According to the investigation, there was urine sample substitution, advance warnings about controls and serious failures in the supervision of sample collection, irregularities detected through World Rugby’s biological passport programme before the 2023 World Cup. WADA itself even expressed a loss of confidence in the Georgian anti-doping agency.

We are talking about Georgia, a team that had turned its growth into one of the most solid and admired stories in European rugby over the last decade, reaching its best-ever position of 11th in the world rankings, securing qualification for the 2027 World Cup and maintaining a run of 35 matches unbeaten in the Rugby Europe Championship.

It is not just a team that falls, it is a narrative that falls

It is also devastating because of the structure of the cheating, as it is not an isolated case but a system of protection around deception, with the use of recreational drugs, sample swapping and prior warnings about controls. That points to a systemic culture, and in that case it is much harder to solve the problem simply by removing the players who tested positive… The clean-up should extend to the leadership, to the sporting structure at all levels… In short, cleaning the infected area and the surrounding tissue.

Georgia had won 16 European titles up to 2025, linked seven consecutive championships before losing to Portugal and had monopolised the Rugby Europe Championship for years. In addition, the Georgian ecosystem had been reinforced by the dominance of Black Lion in the Rugby Europe Super Cup, with four consecutive titles in 2024/25, and its continuous presence in World Cups since 2003… Now it is known that all of this was a house of cards supported by cheating and lies.

The worst thing this case leaves is falsehood

How many scrums were manipulated? How many runs down the wings were false? How many titles lifted were tainted? The great falsehood left by the scandal is not only that of manipulated samples. It is that of a moral superiority that accompanied the Georgian narrative. With what face could those cheaters look at their opponent in the third half while enjoying victory with a beer? Do they love rugby so little?

WADA has already warned that it has lost confidence in the Georgian anti-doping structure and World Rugby keeps the disciplinary process open to publish all resolutions and sanctions. That means the case could still grow. Georgia will continue to be an important nation in European rugby, because its base, its fans and its competitive tradition do not disappear overnight. How many have they robbed of their place in international rugby? How much could rugby in Spain, Portugal or Romania have grown in the media if they had achieved victories that were taken away by the Lelos?