All Black stars in sleeping pill cocktail binge

[The InnFORCEr]

AFP
March 20, 2014, 2:31 pm

Wellington (AFP) - New Zealand rugby chiefs on Thursday admitted two prominent All Blacks abused prescription sleeping pills during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, but denied the practice was commonplace among professional players.

New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) chief executive Steve Tew said Cory Jane and Israel Dagg "let themselves down" when they took pills on a night out in Auckland just before the All Blacks' quarter-final against Argentina.

He denied the drug abuse, details of which only emerged after media reports on Thursday, had been covered up, saying it was dealt with at the time.

"The incident that occurred that night was at a level that was dealt with internally by the team, we weren't covering anything up," he told reporters.

At the time, reports said the pair went on a drinking binge at an Auckland bar and were seen swaying and slurring their words.

Radio New Zealand reported on Thursday that players were mixing sleeping pills with alcohol or energy drinks to achieve an amphetamine-like high that does not breach doping codes.

It said that Jane and Dagg were not the only All Blacks to take such sleeping pill cocktails and the practice remained "prevalent at Super Rugby level".

Tew disputed this, saying the NZRU had not encountered any more cases since the World Cup, which the New Zealanders went on to win.

However, he said the organisation had surveyed coaches, doctors and others involved in elite rugby to see if they were aware of any issues.

?Our guys live in a very tight environment for a long period of time," he said. "While we don?t know about everything that happens in a team environment, it is hard to keep too many secrets."

He said the NZRU had no plans to introduce testing for sleeping pills, a move Australia's National Rugby League adopted this week.

Tew said that when properly prescribed by medics, sleeping pills had a legitimate function helping players adjust to the high level of travel in Super 15 rugby, which involves games in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

"It would be a big call to take sleeping pills out of our tool kit for teams travelling through multiple time zones constantly many times a year when you are expected to perform the next day in a very physically demanding game,? he said.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/spo...ocktail-binge/


I reckon the IRB should take Bill back and let us have a re match with France

[chibi]

They could take the 2003 one back from the English for fielding 16 players...

[The InnFORCEr]

Hansen: Education only way around pill issue

MARC HINTON
Last updated 11:47 24/03/2014


All Blacks coach Steve Hansen says education is the answer to making elite rugby players more aware of the pitfalls of mixing prescription sleeping pills with energy drinks.

New Zealand Rugby Union chief executive Steve Tew last week outed All Blacks Israel Dagg and Cory Jane as having been guilty of the practice at the 2011 World Cup, and there have also been revelations some Kiwis indulged in the cocktail at the Rugby League World Cup last year.

Hansen told LiveSport radio today that the practice had become a significant issue among sportsmen and that it needed to be addressed.

"People's awareness of this problem has grown and we can't hide from it," Hansen said. "We've got to be up front and deal with it, and the best way to deal with it is to educate our players, 'yeah, you do need to have the ability to relax and get off what I call the Ferris wheel of continuous playing', but there's a certain way of doing that that's not going to be harmful.

"In this case the sleeping pills and fizzy drink and alcohol, if you continue doing it, it's going to be harmful. So you sit down and try to educate them that this is not the way to do it. You've got to find other ways to help you get off that Ferris wheel."

Hansen, like Tew last week, denied there had been a 'cover-up' with the All Blacks not releasing any details of the nature of the offending by Dagg and Jane at the time.

He said it was only "as time went on" that the team found out that the players had used sleeping pills and at that point it was believed to be an isolated incident.

"Sleeping pills are not on the Wada banned list, so you've got to think how are we going to deal with this,"

Hansen told LiveSport. "Long term it's not going to be a great thing for the athlete and short term it can also create one or two problems with how they behave.

"That's not the way the All Blacks want to live, so we put in place an educative form of trying to deal with it."

Hansen said it had now become apparent that the practice had become a sporting-wide issue and it was important that all sports, not just rugby, acknowledged it and dealt with it.

"Obviously it has already happened, and how much is it [still] happening? Once we find that out, the players' association, the franchises, the unions, the rugby union itself, and all the coaches and players have to work hard in trying to deal with the issue, and educate our players it's not the way to go."

Hansen also confirmed he and manager Darren Shand had already started the process of nailing down plans for next year's World Cup, with visits to match venues, training spots and prospective hotels in England earlier this year.

"We'll also look at what type of game we're going to need to be playing at that tournament, and how we can develop that over the next 18 months."

But Hansen said that needed to be balanced by the need to win matches here and now, starting with the upcoming three-test series against a confident England outfit in June.

Hansen said he had no concerns with the injury-enforced absence of skipper Richie McCaw in Super Rugby, and was confident he would be fit enough to be considered to face the English.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/a...und-pill-issue