The Irish Sports Council yesterday launched the new anti-doping rules that will come into effect on June 1st of this year.

The rules, which had to be implemented before the Athens Olympic Games in August, will embrace inter-county GAA players for the first time for out-of-competition testing.

The council carried out 957 tests last year, including 183 tests paid for by Irish sports federations, and turned up six positive findings. In three of those positive tests sanctions were imposed with three cases still in process.

Those figures compare to six positive findings in 2002, four in 2001 and 12 in 2000, which points to a dramatic reduction in positive findings given the increase in the number of tests. In 2000, less than 400 tests turned up the 12 positive athletes.

"Those statistics show that the athletes know that they can't take supplements and they can't take banned substances because they now know they are going to be caught," said Olympic Council of Ireland doctor Conor O'Brien. "The stats are saying that the anti-doping programme is working well."

Sixty per cent of the tests were out of competition with 36 sports involved, and 103 tests were conducted overseas.

International runner Geraldine Hendricken was banned for two years for testing positive to 19-norandrosterone, while Shamrock Rovers goalkeeper Barry Ryan was given a nine-month suspension for benzoylecgonine.

An Irish tug-of-war competitor tested for pseudoephedrine, which was taken off the banned list last January.