Modern sport is a lot worse than what it was before the turn of the millennium.
George Best, Manchester United's best ever player, was not only a celebrated footballer, but a world class pisshead and womaniser. Bill Shankly used to sit and drink Guiness and whiskey in 'The Bootroom', while he and his coaching staff turned Liverpool into the biggest team in England and Europe.
Some say Paul Merson was 50% talented, 50% fueled by cocaine, for fuck's sake.
Now, any of that would warrant some kind of ban and a lifetime's worth of bad press.
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Across the pond, back before the current era of sport, things were no different. During the eighties, the New York Mets baseball team were notorious for doing a lot of drugs during games.
Ron Darling, a former pitcher for the Mets, wrote about how he and his teammates basically won a Major League Baseball championship in 1986 thanks to drugs and alcohol.
"Each pill had its own name. The five-milligram amphetamines were known as white crosses-and these were passed around like candy, if that was your bag. The heavier doses were black beauties," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal article.
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"You'd continue to hear comments like, "Hey, I did a couple of white crosses but that didn't do it so I threw a black beauty on top and it was perfect." You'd see guys toward the end of a game, maybe getting ready for their final at bat, double-back into the locker room to chug a beer to "re-kick the bean" so they could step to the plate completely wired and focused and dialed in," he went on to say.
If that's what went on before and during games, I would have loved to have been in the team clubhouse after a fucking victory.
Words by Mark McGowan
Featured Image Credit:Topics: Baseball