No positive drug tests were returned during the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the International Rugby Board (IRB) said this evening.

The tournament's anti-doping programme recorded 212 tests, including urine and blood samples, and no positive results have been revealed by laboratory analysis so far, the IRB said.

Four samples were taken at each of the matches staged in France, Edinburgh and Cardiff while there was also an out-of-competition programme of tests for the first time in the tournament's history.

"The Rugby World Cup 2007 anti-doping programme was the largest of its kind for a rugby tournament and proved to be a massive success," the IRB's anti-doping manager Tim Ricketts said in a statement.

He said the samples would be stored at the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) accredited laboratory in Paris until a test for human growth hormone became available.