Jones warned 'drug-takers'

By Peter Jenkins
July 27, 2007 12:00am

FORMER Wallabies coach Eddie Jones was so concerned that two Australian players may have been taking drugs he warned them to "change their ways" or be overlooked by selectors.

Australian Rugby Union boss John O'Neill makes the revelation in his newly-released autobiography It's Only A Game - A Life In Sport.

Referring to his first stint as ARU chief executive from 1995-2004, O'Neill discusses the temptations faced by young and cashed-up professional footballers and off-field decisions that can lead to disaster.

"Alcohol is probably still No. 1 on the hit parade of abuse in sport," he wrote.

"I am not aware if gambling has become a major problem in rugby union, but from my last couple of years in the game I do know recreational drugs were starting to become an issue.

"When Eddie Jones was coach, he once alerted me very discreetly - no names, no pack drill - that he was worried about a couple of players.

"To his knowledge they had become recreational drug-users, and their form and attitude were (suffering).

"Eddie had taken these two players aside and given them a stern warning that unless they changed their ways they would no longer be considered for selection.

"He asked for my support . . . and I agreed without hesitation.

"It was the one and only hard conversation where Eddie formally told me we had a problem, and we moved to weed it out."

O'Neill did not say when he spoke to Jones, who coached the Wallabies from 2001-2005.

But the ARU boss, who returned as managing director and chief executive last month, also addresses suspicions from European rivals about Australian players and performance enhancing drugs in the late 1990s.

"There was no evidence to support these theories," he wrote. "But the bulked-up appearance of our players was raising eyebrows."

O'Neill said legal substances such as creatine were in widespread use around the world and the ARU held an amnesty in early 1998, just two years after the game went professional, so Wallaby players could reveal any supplements they were consuming.

"We were not sure what was out there," O'Neill writes. "So we made the promise that if they put it all on the table . . . everything . . . we'd get it all checked out and give back what was good or harmless. Anything potentially harmful, let alone banned, would be confiscated.

"We realised there might be players out there not fully versed on precisely what they were taking."

O'Neill says one substance had the Australian team's medical staff stumped. When analysed, the results, he says, were jaw-dropping.

"This player had been taking a mixture that was primarily used in pottery factories, during the manufacturing process, to help harden ceramic pots. Clearly, if taken by humans . . . it would rot your gut. No surprise then that the player was warned off taking his pottery pills."

*Peter Jenkins assisted O'Neill with the production of It's Only a Game