Dwain Chambers’s hopes of resurrecting his athletics career always seemed likely to rest on a wing and a prayer, but it appears that he has accepted defeat and restricted himself to the wing for Castleford Tigers.

After winning a silver medal at the World Indoor Championships three weeks ago, the sprinter had been considering whether to launch an appeal against his British Olympic Association (BOA) life ban, automatically handed to doping offenders, but it seems that the overt opposition to his second comeback has dissuaded him.

Instead, he is expected to make a move to the bottom club in the engage Super League and could be introduced to the public in West Yorkshire’s coal-mining belt on Monday. That will add another chapter to a soap opera in which Chambers has been portrayed as both a pariah and a victim. According to Chambers’s legal team, he had “to run 70 metres for his 60 metres medal” in Spain and the wave of dissension undoubtedly affected him. “I don’t want to be the bad guy any more,” he said.

However, with UK Athletics (UKA) picking him for Valencia only under the threat of High Court action, he knew he was not going to win over athletics’ new hardline hierarchy. Niels de Vos, the UKA chief executive, made Chambers’s second recall to the British team — he first returned in 2006, to minimal fuss — a moral issue.

In doing so he was criticised for double standards, but the furore has gained the desired result. Few at UKA will be shedding any tears if this does mark the end of Chambers as an athlete, but the satisfaction can be smiled upon from the moral high ground only if other drugs cheats are treated the same way. Carl Myerscough, a shot-putter, who has also served a drugs ban, was picked for the World Indoors and nobody saw fit to issue a statement pointing out the selection panel was unanimously against his inclusion, as happened with Chambers.

This week a source close to Chambers let it be known that he may not challenge the BOA ban in time for Beijing. The cost of a High Court action was not the issue, nor the likelihood of success, but Chambers knows that he would not win the 100 metres at the Olympics and had to consider whether it would be worth being hauled over the coals for another six months. “He has the rest of his life to consider,” the source said.

With UKA opposed to his return, UK Sport calling on him to turn whistleblower and European promoters pledging not to invite drugs cheats to their meetings, Chambers has been considering what would be achieved by a legal challenge. It remains an option, but he is now pursuing a second career for a second time. He signed for the Hamburg Sea Devils, an American football team, last year but his coach said that Chambers had struggled to catch the ball.

Chambers hinted that he had an escape route after winning his silver medal in Valencia. “I have a plan but I’m keeping it to to myself,” he said when asked what he was going to do with the rest of his life. “Two years ago I had to think outside of athletics. I was Peter Pan and I had to become a grown-up asking what do I do? I’m a little wiser and smarter now about my decision-making and if it’s not going to benefit me and my family, then I’m just not interested.”

How Chambers must regret going to the United States in 2002 and receiving “the full enchilada” of drugs from Victor Conte, the man behind the notorious Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative. He tested positive for THG in 2003 but after his band expired admitted to using it for 18 months before failing his test.

His candour cost him dearly and the IAAF, the world governing body, demanded £120,000 in fees and prizemoney. His two gold medals from the 2002 European Championships were also annulled. The greatest irony of all is that the drugs really did not work for Chambers and the man who set a world record of 10.06sec as a junior saw his times get worse. He is likely to remain in debt and plagued by regret wherever he goes.

Wing and a prayer

How Dwain Chambers may fit in to rugby league:

Like sprinters, some rugby league wings are floaters, others explosive. Chambers definitely fits the second category. He has the pace — and more — of the ultimate league speedster, Martin Offiah. Chambers would be the fastest since Lesley Vainikolo, the former Bradford Bulls wing, who once ran 100 metres in 10.6sec.

Offiah was no fan of tackling, but there is no hiding place in league and Chambers would have to do his share of defending and the hard yards to get his team out of their half. He is used to running with his arms pumping, but must learn to carry the ball and develop the ability to fend off tacklers.

Fitness should not be a problem but the only thing he has passed is a baton. In his brief dalliance with American football he got used to catching, but passing a rugby ball is uncharted territory. Wings can also feel the hot breath of spectators on their necks as they fly down the flanks at The Jungle, Castleford’s ground.

About 400 doping tests are conducted in rugby league each year, including a rigorous programme of out-of-season testing.

Words by Christopher Irvine