Rugby stars were given painkillers for games, says BOD
It became ‘almost a habit’
BRIAN O’Driscoll has revealed how prescription painkillers were regularly handed out to Leinster and Ireland’s rugby heroes so they could ‘play their best game’.
Ireland’s most capped player and record try scorer admitted that taking co-codamol and Difene before a match became ‘almost a habit’.
The former Ireland and Lions captain was responding to an International Rugby Players’ survey that revealed how 45% of players feel pressured by coaches and backroom staff to play while injured.
He added that they also used sleepers such as Diazepam to try and counteract the effects of caffeine tablets he also took.
‘I’m not saying it was the culture but it happened,’ he told Newstalk’s Off The Ball.
‘I would have been part of teams where, on the way to a game, a doctor would have walked down the bus and inquired as to who wanted what in advance of it.
‘For me, for the last couple of seasons, part of my match prep would have been a Difene and a couple of co-codamol. It almost became like habit.
‘It gave me a fighting chance, if I wasn’t feeling 100%, that it might have levelled it up, which was probably a lot of the time. That is the reality of it.’
He added: ‘I wouldn’t have been the only one doing that. It was mostly the older players, trying to balance the equilibrium, almost of feeling okay. I’m sure, at times, in my subconscious, I would have just taken it because it became part and parcel, where maybe I could have done without it. Again, when it’s perfectly legal and there is no need for TUEs (Therapeutic Use Exemptions), give yourself a chance to play your best game.’
The rugby legend said he had never felt the pressure asked about in the survey.
‘I would have three little tablets of caffeine, like chewing gum,’ he said. ‘You would get into a routine where I knew exactly what I was doing, I had it down to the final seconds. As soon as I ran out on the pitch I’d bash it away and do my pre-warm up before we got together with the team.
‘That was just part and parcel of the last four or five years of my career.’ He said: ‘In the Leinster and Irish set-ups, at that time, they were acceptable – you could
‘Difene and couple of co-codamol’
get your hands on Difene.’
It is less the case now he said, but added: ‘You got to fight your case a little bit more now, and prove the necessity of having them. Certainly drug cabinets that might have been open once
‘You got to fight your case now’
upon a time are very much shut and inaccessible.’
Leinster coach, Leo Cullen, took issue with O’Driscoll’s comments. He said yesterday: ‘To say that there’s an image of medication being just handed out willynilly is a very unfair reflection on the environment we have here at the moment. All I’m really concerned about is the environment we have here at the moment, I’m not really interested in dragging up things from the past, that would be my view,’ said Cullen.
‘I think we’ve got unbelievable medical support in this environment at the moment... It would really upset me if that was tarnished in any way.’
An Irish Rugby Football Union spokesman said, in a statement: ‘IRFU medical staff operate under guidelines and protocols for the provision of appropriate medicines to players when required as part of a holistic treatment plan.’