26 Feb 2015

French rugby players took amphetamines?

12:00 pm on 26 February 2015

France's national rugby team was a vast consumer of amphetamines in the 1980s including in a famous win over the All Blacks, according to a new book.

Serge Blanco scores the winning try. Rugby World Cup 1987 Semi-Final, Australia v France. Sydney, June 1987.

Serge Blanco scores the winning try. Rugby World Cup 1987 Semi-Final, Australia v France. Sydney, June 1987. Photo: PHOTOSPORT

The French team doctor at the time, Jacques Mombet, is quoted as saying in the book that they each had their little pill in front of their plates for the meal before the match.

Mombet said the drug taking was most obvious when France played New Zealand at Nantes in 1986, in a match called 'the battle of Nantes' for its ferocity which resulted in All Black legend Wayne Shelford being knocked out and losing several teeth in the process, and beat the All Blacks 16-3.

Mombet sais in a book by investigative journalist Pierre Ball that the Blacks realised that their opponents, unrecognisable from the previous week, were loaded.

France's rugby establishment did not immediately react to the allegations.

Ballester wrote a 2004 book on disgraced cycling champion Lance Armstrong in which he was among the first to publicly make drug allegations against the seven-time Tour de France champion.

His rugby book, "Rugby a Charges, l'enquete choc" (The case against rugby) is released in France on March 5th.