The Irish Mail on Sunday

I’ve been sleazed on. This new breed think it’s just game on

Sarah (not her real name) is a former nightclub host, who spent the past 10 years working in VIP clubs in Dublin. Here, she tells EOIN MURPHY of her personal experience with young profession­al rugby players and their attitudes to women.

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MOST rugby players are good guys. But there are a few – more in recent years – who treat women like second-class citizens.

In my experience, it starts in schools. In Dublin nightclubs, you can place people from a particular school just by talking to them. I went to private school as well, so I have first-hand experience.

From junior-cup level, they are on a pedestal and groomed for success, deemed unstoppabl­e and invincible. They play big matches at 17 in front of thousands of people chanting their names and girls fall at their feet. They learn from an early age to treat women badly.

Not all of them, of course, but a sizeable number.

Then they go straight to the academy and are treated like a poor man’s Premier League footballer – they have the celebrity but without the wages.

They think they are God’s gift and I would be terrified if I had a kid playing Senior Cup. I worked in the hospitalit­y industry when rugby was becoming increasing­ly popular and when Leinster started winning in Europe. They get into the main nightclub, Krystle, because they know the manager and he knows that if they are in there they will fill the club. They used to go to Coppers and nobody knew who they were, so they went back to Krystle.

Some of the new breed manipulate women. They see the girls they like on social media and then they send their mates to bring them over. That’s how they do it. Girls didn’t really follow them. Of course, there might be a few exceptions who would have really liked one or two and turned up, but I don’t agree that there are groups of girls like ‘scrummies’, who follow them around.

I missed the culture of the WhatsApp groups and sending naked pictures because I am a little bit older, but I know it exists. I don’t deny that there are women who go out and just want to have sex with them and think nothing of it.

However, it is important to say that this is a small minority of boys. Most of the boys in these schools are well-adjusted, mannerly boys who wouldn’t act like that in a million years.

These lads have no fear of rejection either. I have had one or two come up to me and sleaze on me and when I reject them, it’s like: ‘Who do you think you are?’ They don’t care about getting turned down and they are shameless.

The guys they were friendly with at school protect them and look after them because they want to be with them in the nightclub or at the big matches.

At the end of nights, I would see some girls go down the back stairs

of the club, get into taxis and disappear. Off to one of the player’s houses for a party and that was the norm.

I never went but I know girls who did. They said it was always a couple of the players and a lot of girls.

They are groomed to be untouchabl­e. I honestly think that the blurred lines have occurred over time. Before mobile phones, they had lads’ mags and those women were unobtainab­le.

Now, social media gives people the tools to edit their pictures, so they all look like glamour models.

The rugby lads see this and think it is game on when they meet them on a night out. Then there is a complete lack of education... I really believe they don’t know what rape is.

Same with some women. It seems if you are not dragged down an alley and beaten, it is not rape. There is a real lack of humanity in their language and you saw that in the Belfast text messages.

To be fair, GAA lads aren’t as bad and they are chased by women. They are desirable, charismati­c and athletic – but they don’t have the same disregard for women. It is quite different.

I think that is the school culture. You don’t get the same sort of attitude from country schools as, say, from Blackrock or Michael’s. The Clongowes boys were always nicer and I know that is a generalisa­tion but it is my experience. The country lads don’t have that inherited sense of inflated ego. The senior players don’t influence them. They call it ‘schooling’ them.

In Dublin, the academy is known as ‘the Leinster School of **** holes’ by girls who meet them out. Once in the academy they have these notions and opinions that they are better.

Nothing will change. I think they might be a little bit more careful with WhatsApp groups. The same way in the clubs: they think it is okay to creep on random girls and just treat them badly.

And let’s be clear. There are thousands of men who are privileged and have done well in life and don’t treat women like this. Can you imagine your child acting like that? Can you imagine you picked up your child’s phone and saw them speak about another human like that?

‘Once in the academy they have these notions’

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 ??  ?? ELITE: The VIP section of Krystle nighclub, where rugby players often go to meet young women
ELITE: The VIP section of Krystle nighclub, where rugby players often go to meet young women

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