I took pills to play – and nearly lost a game for England

Painkillers are a fact of professional sporting life as you do whatever it takes to get on the field

The use of painkillers in rugby is far from a new trend. Players have been trying to manage pain on a weekly basis since the amateur days, when, in fairness, it was probably worse. For some, taking them as part of a pre-match routine will even be a superstition.

In the early and middle days of professionalism, players would do almost anything legal to stay on the field. They would get concussed and claim they were fine. There is a saying that footballers spend 90 minutes pretending to be hurt, rugby players spend 80 minutes pretending not to be.

You get into a routine, using whatever the doctor thinks you can take in a safe environment. The dosages that are prescribed for everyday people with everyday issues do not apply to rugby players. It is almost a passage into believing you are a superhero. You can take twice as many antiinflammatories because you are physically just a better human being.

That starts a reliance on those drugs that continues even when you have long since retired. I still take anti-inflammatories now and you have to sort of ween yourself off them, because you are so used to having dulled-down pain rather than constant pain.

The long-term effects on your stomach lining and kidneys cannot be good for those who use them all the time. But when you are told at 22 years old that you cannot carry on down that road and have to slow down, you do not care.

You want to run out on the field feeling 80 per cent rather than 60 per cent.

Teams, doctors and clubs certainly have a role to play in ensuring players are taking the appropriate amounts and they are now making every effort to do this, but at the end of the day it comes down to self-preservation. The players make the choice.

The most I ever took was for the 2001 Heineken Cup final, having hurt my medial ligament the week before in the Premiership final. The European game was such a big fixture that there was no way in the world I was missing it.

My schedule involved icing the injury, steadily building up more motion and then upping the dosage, almost as if I was loading the painkillers into my system.

Then, on game day, it was a whole different ball game, taking whatever I could to legally pass the drugs test. For that European final, I was, at best, at 50 per cent. Heavily strapped, lots of adrenalin for the game and then various painkillers – voltarol, ibuprofen, paracetamol, aspirin, co-codamol – whatever I could take that was within the legal dose. The drugs get you on to the field and then once the whistle goes, your body responds naturally.

I do not think my body has been irreversibly damaged by taking painkillers.

It might be slightly worse off, but my life would be a lot worse off both physically and mentally had I not played. As we move into a cotton-wool society where you cannot offend and you cannot take risks, people ask why they are allowed to do certain things. The answer is because it was your choice.

My 50th cap for England, I should never have been on the pitch. I had really bad Achilles tendinitis, but I wanted that accolade desperately.

It starts a reliance on those drugs that continues even when you have long since retired

I ended up nearly costing us the match. Instead of defending in my position on the wing as I should have, I stepped infield and saw Doug Howlett, of New Zealand, come out the back and nearly go around everybody. Only Ben Cohen tackling him in the corner saved the game. I did not have the physical capacity to play and I let my team-mates down.

You should not play when injured. There is a degree of injury that you can play up to, but only you should know when to play and when not to play.

The coaches would not have seen that moment in my 50th cap and instantly thought I was injured – they would have viewed it as a mistake I made. Do I step in, which is only five strides of pain? Or turn and accelerate, which might be 200 strides of pain? I went for the cowardly option by stepping in, as I did by choosing to play in the first place.

With painkillers, people bend the rules and break the rules. However, as was the case for my 50th cap, the majority are playing within the rules, taking whatever they can just to be able to get on the field.