A soccer club that has refused to cooperate with the Island's new drug free sports policy now claims the testing procedures are different than the ones endorsed last November.

Flying in the face of media reports, individual recollections and the Bermuda Council for Drug Free Sports' own standard operating procedure, PHC president Chris Furbert is accusing officials of "piggybacking'' addendums to an already-ratified policy.

"We didn't agree to an open door policy for everybody to just come in and test our players. We didn't do that. At the meeting, some of the clubs, Boulevard, Devonshire Colts, PHC and a few others voiced strong concerns against something like that occurring,'' Furbert said.

"We were told that the policy was designed for the clubs to have control of the procedure, and that's what we agreed to.'' The comments come nearly two months after the official launch of targetted and unannounced drug testing for Island athletes. Last week, PHC officials told a Bermuda Football Association meeting that they would block any of their athletes from being tested.

Under terms of the policy, any athlete that refuses a test will be deemed to have failed and could be banned from all sports for one year for a first offence.

Furbert said clubs left the Drug Free Sports Conference at Stonington Campus in November with the understanding that individual clubs would be in full control of having their players tested, with various federations taking over once a player was representing the country at a national level.

"I don't think it would be fair to those clubs and organisations who were present and who had agreed for a drug free sports policy that said something a little different.

"It can't be right when you have a situation where we agree to something as a group and then have it changed to say another thing.'' However, according to documents distributed to sports groups such as PHC before and after the conference, it is the responsibility of the national governing body "to provide regular updated information on all eligible athletes within their sport'' and to "submit recommendations for unannounced target drug use control .. .'' Furbert also claimed there was no mention of random drug testing, in which ten percent of all Island athletes are subject to year-round screening.

Insisted Furbert: "If they are talking about an international match and the BFA making a decision to have random testing, so be it. But you can't tell me that if PHC are playing Somerset today the BFA is going to come and test players from both sides ... it can't happen.

"We are only amateurs here. If we were pros we may be looking at something different. True, we need to eradicate the drug problem in Bermuda, but we need to be seen going about it in the right way. If an organisation feels that they were brought into the picture to have this policy and they were being in control of it only to be told three months later that ten percent of all the athletes in the country are going to be randomly testing we should be concerned.'' But The Royal Gazette reported a month before the conference that all athletes, whether they played for the senior national soccer squad or played co-ed softball, could receive a phone call asking that they make themselves available for drug screening.

And in the standard operating procedure, nearly three full pages are devoted to the conducting of unannounced drug use, although it does not mention ten percent.

The policy received virtually unanimous ratification at the meeting and was followed up with another meeting in January. In both instances, the The Royal Gazette reported this would include random testing for all Island athletes.

Transcripts from the conferences were not available yesterday but several officials who attended both said this was openly discussed.

Ironically, during the November meeting another PHC executive, David Bean, was named to the Bermuda Council Drug Free Sports. Bean could not be reached yesterday.

Furbert said he was disturbed by comments last week from BFA president Neville Tyrrell, a member of the BCDS who said PHC's rejection "came from out of left field.'' Said Furbert: "I mentioned this to him at BFA meeting in January, advising him that I was concerned about this ten percent testing policy that they were going to come out with covering all sport.

"At the time I said that it looked as though somebody was going to use the back door approach to piggyback on a policy that we had come out with in November to implement another policy for all sports.''