Al Guy is one of those soldiers in the front line, the first over the top in the trenches. Gets close enough to see the whites of their eyes. Al Guy is in the drugs protection racket after all.

Earlier this year the part-time athletics administrator took his first serious sustained media attack. Through inference and laboured innuendo, attempts were made to undermine the professional credibility of both himself and his wife Kay.

The media attacks on the Guys were born out of the fact that they were the testing team who arrived in Kilkenny unannounced in January of last year with their Versa Pak canisters and Ph measures to collect the urine of Michelle de Bruin.

In the absurdly comedic rush to blame anyone but de Bruin for tampering with that sample, Al and Kay Guy were demonised as sloppy scientists bent on raining fire and brimstone upon the head of an Irish heroine. They were the gullible field operatives in the global conspiracy intent on hanging Ireland's flaxen haired, triple gold medallist.

Although the bleating was relentless, details of what happened in Kilkenny were sparse because the Guys and the company for which they worked, the International Drug Testing Management (IDTM), said little until the de Bruin conspiracy case was proven to be groundless.

In Ireland the reaction of the Minister for Tourism and Sport Jim McDaid, through the Irish Sports Council, was to appoint IDTM as the agency to carry out Ireland's first ever drug testing programme. Its operational manager is Al Guy.

Al Guy now waits for Ireland to take a belated step in get in line with European thinking on the issue of performance enhancing substances. The starting gun is in the hands of the Irish Sports Council. A courier has been signed and the IOC accredited laboratory in London is the probable venue for analysis of the urine collected by the IDTM. Sports Council chief executive John Treacy now just needs pull the trigger.

"Coming from a background of 28 years in Customs and Excise it (the de Bruin case) didn't affect me that much," says Guy, sitting in Batts, his daughter's elegant restaurant in Baggot Lane, Dublin, "but it did have a very, very marked effect on my family as a whole, not just my mother . . . but the snide remarks, the comments . . . these are part of life," he says.

"It would be wrong of me to say that something similar will not happen again but it's a one in a thousand situation. You've got to be able to justify every move you make and prove every move you make. At the present moment we've a couple of ex-army people, a couple of former gardai and a few nurses involved. That's a good selection of people who are familiar with procedures."

IDTM will carry out all of the testing in Ireland on behalf of the Sports Council. Guy's job is to co-ordinate the sampling and ensure the quality of the testers and the integrity of the samples up until the time the courier transports them to London. It is the first time a drug testing agency has been employed to undertake such work and will move Ireland's current state of testing from being ridiculed into a professionally managed and co-ordinated effort.

Various federations had previously dipped into a number of sports but none ferociously enough to cause a ripple. Rugby had three positive tests last year but had kept them quiet. Cycling had more than four in the last two years. Athletics had one at the Atlanta Olympics. Those statistics are an anomaly. They are too low.

The behemoth organisations such as the GAA, rugby and soccer have been barely touched except when they have travelled outside the state and come under the auspices of other sports bodies such as the UK Sports Council.

The Irish Sports Council hopes that the IDTM can carry out between 400 and 600 tests annually using a dozen testers, although the number of active participants throughout all sports, male and female, is clearly thousands of times greater. Familiar as anyone with the persuasive arithmetic, Guy, however positive, is loath to declare just yet that the new order will turn over a significant number of rogue traders.

"Sure the number of tests carried out among all of the sports will be relatively low. As a nation we have been a long way behind the rest of Europe and other signatories to various European conventions. But obviously this is not something that should be left entirely to the government. Sporting federations should look to their own houses and do what they can to protect their younger members. They cannot just walk away and say it is the responsibility of the Sports Council," he says.

"Take GAA, rugby and soccer, those sports might like to extend the scope of their testing and even bring it down to schoolboy levels on some occasions."

Collecting the urine of athletes is not pleasant, but it is a task that draws respect from those who believe in the basic philosophy of drug-free sport. In that regard Guy and his officers have to be disciples.

"Yes, you have to believe in what you are doing. I don't believe in drug abuse in sport. If someone wants to crucify themselves then that's fine. It's their own business. But when it gets to a situation where there is pressure on other people because it's the only way (that) they believe they will beat the person in front of them then that's wrong.

"If they want to turn sport into a circus okay. Let the performers go off and do their own thing but don't contaminate the rest. Yes, I've heard the argument about letting people take what they want but I don't like it. I believe sport is a level playing field between human beings, not supercharged human beings.

"If the product is nutritional and not dangerous, that's fine. It's (drug taking) something people should not be forced to do if they want to be successful. If you want to set up a circus with supercharged Ferrarai type athletes fine. But make sure people go in to it with their eyes open and knowing the consequences."

If Guy had his way the consequences of being caught of drugabuse would be far greater than being sin-binned from the sport for a couple of years. Last year customs officials working with French and Belgian police opened up the can of worms that was the Tour de France. Amidst great wailing from the petulant riders, cycling's offensive innards were laid bare because of the entry and seizure powers of officials.

"Maybe the whole area needs to be looked at," says Guy. "I know France and Denmark have written it into their criminal code. Such areas of possession and supply might be put on the same level as in agriculture where if you have clenbuterol (a steroid) for animals it is a criminal charge, not a civil charge. Everything in sports doping now ends up in the civil courts.

"As a result national federations are justifiably afraid. Look at the Butch Reynolds case in the US. That cost the IAAF a couple of million dollars merely to be represented. The initial award, overturned on appeal, was horrendous and would have bankrupted the federation. In the Tour de France it was co-operation between customs and police which blew the thing sky high."

Guy has been involved in testing for over 25 years and despite it being the backbone of the de Bruin case, does not accept that anyone has yet been maliciously convicted. He sees an opportunity for sport to return to sanity but heads have still to be butted. In the arena of performance enhancing substances, Ireland is no more healthy or ill than other nations.

"Good lord no. There is no evidence that Ireland is any more drug free than any other country," he says.

"I was recently talking to the president of a German sports federation who had attended a meeting with Mathew Ewald, the Minister for Sport in the former East Germany. The president raised the question of being ostracised from international sport and Ewald answered `you know it is the policy of the GDR not to encourage drugs in sport. If you cannot implement this policy, then we can always find someone else who will'."

Guy is as much a realist as Ewald but his energy flows in the opposite direction. When it comes to stopping drug abuse in sport, Guy's a man in the front line. No fear of harsh realities and certainly at his best in the trenches.