League side aim to drug test own players

By CATHERINE MASTERS

Hawkes Bay's representative rugby league team are trying to raise money so they can be drug-tested.

The Unicorns have pledged to turn their back on taking the drug P - crystal methamphetamine - and to show their commitment they have agreed to be randomly tested before games.

The trouble is the New Zealand Sports Drug Agency does not normally test second-division teams and a methamphetamine test costs about $500 a player.

The Unicorns find it hard enough raising money just to play in the competition, but team manager Denis O'Reilly says the drug tests will be worth it because they will help to keep league free of P, which will help to isolate P manufacturers.

"We've been applying to funding agencies and to the pokies and god knows what," said Mr O'Reilly, a life member of Black Power who has lobbied hard against P for several years.

The drug tests would give players a reason to say no to P, he said.

"Like many districts, league tends to be a younger-male activity here and it's one of the P-using demographics. It's just around our communities everywhere.

"Say there's someone who's at a party and the P pipe's going around - and there's a huge amount of peer pressure - and the dude that doesn't smoke can say, 'Look bro, I'm not smoking P. I want to play representative football and we have a testing protocol and don't put me in this position'."

Mr O'Reilly said the P available in Hawkes Bay was often poor-quality home-bake.

"They tend to binge it. They deal with it like they deal with alcohol and any other recreational drug and they just binge it and then you get these psychoses and acute psychoses."

NZ Rugby League chairman Selwyn Pearson is all for the drug-testing.

"It's not that we're recognising a P problem in rugby league - it's a problem for the whole country," he said.

"In this initiative Hawkes Bay are saying to their players, 'We're going to test you and if you want to smoke that stuff you can't play rugby league', and we're hoping like hell anyone involved will say, 'I'd rather play rugby league'.

"What we're hoping is, even if it's one person who says, 'Well, I would rather play rugby league than smoke P', then that's mission accomplished, isn't it?"

Herald Feature: The P epidemic

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