I Thought I Was Going To Relax For The Summer. Then The Tabloids Started Ringing.

The inside story behind rugby's most notorious drugs scandal

That summer was, and will forever be, seared into my memory. Thinking back to it now still gives me a physical response in the pit of my stomach. A mixture of stress, unfinished business and a lack of closure. Here is the story as it played out for me.

I had told everyone I was finally going to relax that summer. I was desperate for it. It had been a tough year, with a few scandals already, and I had finally made plans. Ah, plans, a thing that normal people took for granted, but for me were like gold dust, or maybe mythical. I just never got any.

Unlike the coaches and the players, I was not classed as backroom staff, so the usual block of summer weeks off to just relax and go on holiday never technically applied to me, but I had promised myself something close to it anyway. I was going to work ordinary hours and enjoy going out in the evenings with my friends.

To celebrate my time off, I had organised a day with my oldest, childhood friend, starting with lunch and shopping. I had barely seen her in months, because the rest of the year simply did not allow for it, and she was one of the few people who accepted my crazy, relentless existence.

I was just getting out of the shower when my phone rang. It was a senior player, and he was ringing to tell me he had just got off the phone with a tabloid journalist who was about to report that several of the players had been snorting cocaine on the team bus. He had given the journalist my number. He wanted to know what he should do. I remember feeling relieved to get that call, because it meant I was not going to be caught off guard by whatever was coming next, but equally, I also remember that it made me feel physically sick. I asked him to trust me completely, to tell me exactly what he had been asked and exactly what he had said, and then to tell me the truth about the rest of it. He did. That was the last quiet moment of the day, for weeks.