Two leading French rugby clubs will subject their players to random drug tests amid a “plague” of cocaine use in the sport across the Channel.

Bordeaux and Racing 92, the club on the outskirts of Paris which recently signed former England captain Owen Farrell, may not be the last Top 14 teams to introduce the measure this season after the chairwoman of the French anti-doping agency warned of the rising scourge in an interview this week.

Béatrice Bourgeois outlined alarming data on the issue: “Rugby has a real cocaine problem. Whether at sevens, league or union.

“We are seeing it more and more. In 2023, we had seven positive tests for cocaine – five were in rugby. In 2024, up to now there have been four cases and they are all in rugby.”

Laurent Marti, the Bordeaux president, announced that his players would face random drug tests. He said: “We told the players: ‘Be careful, there is a plague, we don’t want it in our sport, therefore we are making sure that you are more under surveillance.’”

Maxime Lucu, the Bordeaux and France scrum-half, said: “Drugs at parties is a plague. We are in a sport that is confronted by that during the third halves.”

France’s summer tour to Argentina was marred by off-field scandal and controversy. Melvyn Jaminet, the Toulon full-back, was suspended for 34 weeks for posting an Instagram story in which he said: “The first Arab whose path I cross, I will headbutt him.”

Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jégou, the 21-year-old forwards, were arrested on suspicion of rape – an accusation which they deny. The duo have since been allowed to return to France.

There has been no suggestion that Jaminet, Auradou or Jégou took cocaine in Argentina but the latter, the La Rochelle back-rower, was suspended last year for a month for cocaine use.

In the aftermath of those incidents, Florian Grill, president of the Fédération Française de Rugby, said: “We did not wait until this dramatic business to grasp the issue of addictions in general and of cocaine in particular.” Grill added that cocaine usage was “endemic” in amateur French rugby.