... continuesShamed former Great Britain hooker Terry Newton is to be asked to name the players he claims have used or are still using the banned substance human growth hormone (HGH).
Newton was banned for two years in February after testing positive for HGH last November and, in an extract from his forthcoming autobiography Coming Clean, published in Sunday's News of the World, he insists its use is widespread in the game.
"We are aware of Terry Newton's comments and will be speaking to him about his claims," RFL spokesman John Ledger said. "The RFL is committed to eradicating drug use in the sport and any information Terry can provide to help with our efforts to root out cheats would be most useful."
full article on Newton here:
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sport/8 ... t-him.html
TERRY NEWTON looks at himself in the mirror every day and a drug cheat stares back at him.
It's a sight that makes him sick. Because he knows the shame will stain his name for ever.
Memories of his days as one of Great Britain's most fearless and fearsome forwards are tainted for good. His achievements with Leeds, Wigan and Bradford - including two Challenge Cup wins and four Grand Final defeats - are equally blemished.
Newton's drug shame, in becoming the first sportsman in the WORLD to test positive for human growth hormone (hGH), happened after all those exploits.
But the fiery hooker's glittering and controversial career counts for little compared to his new reputation as a convicted drug user.
It's a shame that Newton is determined to talk about, so that:
People don't think he was taking heroin like his addict sister who died, leaving three young children.
Fans understand the depression and desperation that made him become one of the drug cheats he used to loathe.
Other Super League players who have been taking hGH - maybe as many as 100 - stop gambling with their careers.
Newton said: "When I started taking it, I wasn't thinking sensibly. I was depressed, desperate and looking for a quick fix.
"I can't believe I allowed myself to be seduced by something that promised me so much, when in the end it's taken so much.
"The more I look back, the more I get upset about what I did. But, while I'm ashamed, I genuinely hope that some good can come from the f***-ups I made."
Newton, 31, grew up on one of the roughest estates in Wigan, where crime and drugs were the norm for many people, including tragically his younger sister.
While Newton devoted himself to rugby, Leanne started dabbling in drugs, leading to a spiral of heroin addiction and misery for her family.
Her death in 2008, with Newton holding her hand, led to the player being diagnosed with depression and put on anti-depressants.
On top of this, Newton had fallen out of love with rugby league and was struggling to motivate himself for the monotony of endless training.
And then there was the fear that he was being overtaken by younger players - some of whom he suspected were using hGH.
It was a cocktail of suspicion, depression and boredom that convinced him last summer to take drugs for the first time - without any guilt or fear.
He said: "I'll be honest, my biggest concern about taking the hGH wasn't the effects - good or bad - or even whether the RFL managed to find out.
"I was s****ing it in case my wife Stacey found out! If Stacey had known, she'd have strung me up.
"She's the one person in the world I can tell anything to and yet for the first time, I had something I had to hide from her. I can only imagine it must be like when a person is having an affair, trying to cover their tracks and hide stuff."
Newton researched the drug on the internet, but always deleted his searches from the computer history to prevent Stacey stumbling across his sordid secret.
Convinced it would help his career - and couldn't be detected - Newton contacted another current player who he knew was taking hGH.
The unnamed player agreed - for £150 - to supply him for a month initially, handing the drugs over at a service station on the M62.
Newton said: "It wasn't like some dodgy, back-alley drug deal. It was as if I was buying a stereo off a mate.
"I'd like to say that I wrestled with the decision, but I didn't. My mind was made up. There was no guilt. I'd blanked the severity of what I was doing from my mind."
It started a career suicide mission that Newton never dreamt would happen, because he knew other players were doing it and nobody was getting caught.
He said: "From 2007 players were hearing about hGH. All we knew - or thought - was that it was undetectable. At the end of 2007, Great Britain played the Kiwis and there was a player involved who I'd heard was taking hGH and he got away with it.
"I'd heard about a number of players who were on it. Old, young, English, foreign... more and more were turning to it, believing they wouldn't get caught."
Bradford paid Newton off in July 2009 after he broke his cheekbone, giving him three months before he started training with his new club Wakefield.
He decided to use the time to experiment with hGH and see if it really did speed up recovery from injuries, enabling him to train harder.
Within weeks, Newton was so impressed with how much fitter he felt that he decided to carry on indefinitely with the cycle of five injections a day for five days, then two days off.
He wasn't even worried when the drug testers turned up at training last November and said they wanted him to give a blood test.
He said: "It didn't cross my mind that I'd get done for it. I'd last taken a dose of hGH the previous day at 4pm, about 18 or 19 hours ago.
"Even the most sceptical of warnings about hGH had been that it was out of your system in 20 minutes. I was off the hook. As far as I was concerned, it was undetectable."
Newton lived in contented bliss, training hard and playing two of Wakefield's opening three Super League games, before his world fell apart.
The bombshell hit in February in the form of a recorded letter from UK Sport, telling him that he'd tested positive for hGH and was immediately suspended.
He said: "I nearly dropped through the f***ing floor. I was devastated. A hollow, nauseous feeling started in my gut and spread throughout me.
"I started panicking. It felt like I was drowning. I bent over the kitchen table like I'd been hit in the ribs, trying to take in breaths. It was as if my whole world was collapsing around me."
Stacey asked what was wrong, forcing him to make the hardest confession of his life, telling how he'd cheated and kissed goodbye to his career and his six-figure two-year deal at Wakefield.
He said: "In an instant she went from shocked to s***-scary - she just flipped her lid.
"She went mental, crying, hysterical. I tried to give her a hug, but she just pushed me away - she was disgusted with me."
Newton then had the same painful task of telling his mum and dad. Parents who had still not recovered from seeing their daughter die after years of drug abuse.
He said: "If I could have pictured their pain, back when I first started taking hGH, I wouldn't have done it. My mum and dad had been anti-drugs for years because they had seen how heroin had taken a grip of Leanne.
"Rugby league had set me off down the right path, away from crime and drugs. My sister died. It brought a tear to my eye that I'd p***ed it all away.
"People close to me couldn't believe why I'd done it and, now I look back, I can't either.
"Some people say I'm only sorry because I've been caught but that's not true.
"It took me getting caught to make me see sense. But at the time my head was up my a***. I was weak and I cheated but I never saw hGH as a drug because it was something that was helping me.
"I was depressed, and rugby was making me worse, not better. Age had also caught up with me and that fuelled my depression.
"No one wants to fade away. I didn't want to spend two years at Wakefield being an average player.
"I'm not saying any of this to try to water down what I did. What I took was a banned substance, and the more testing rugby league does the better.
"I've always been against banned substances and, as hollow as this sounds, I still am."
The father-of-two may consider making a comeback when his ban runs out in 2012 and has agreed to undergo random drugs tests between now and then.
In between, he is running a pub he owns with his father-in-law. He said: "It's called the Ben Johnson, but not after the Canadian drugs cheat. But I must admit the name is quite ironic!"
