Former rugby league player Oliver Wilkes admits doping during career

The former Scotland rugby league international Oliver Wilkes has revealed he used performance-enhancing drugs during his career and has urged aspiring players not to follow in his footsteps.

The 41-year-old represented Super League sides Huddersfield, Wigan and Wakefield in addition to several other clubs during a playing career which lasted two decades. In an interview published on Tuesday, Wilkes explained how he was guilty of doping when playing for Whitehaven in 2006 and within six weeks had earned a contract with boyhood side Wigan.

While the forward did not suggest any of his former clubs knew he or other unnamed teammates were doping, the Cumbrian is eager to create change.

“I don’t want young lads to go into the game feeling like they have to do something that is not right to get where they want to be in the game but their spot is being taken by someone that is doing it,” Wilkes told ITV. “I don’t want them to have to feel like that. I just want them to look at that person and say I want to be him and I know I can do it because I know I don’t have to cheat.”

He continued: “At one stage I thought to myself how am I going to compete with that person knowing they are doing what they are doing? And this was before I tried it [performance-enhancing drugs] myself.

“You knew someone was using something and you knew you were as good as them but they were getting picked so you would think to yourself is that what I have to do to get in the team? Do I have to take something?”

UK Anti-Doping (Ukad) announced last month Jamie Acton, formerly of Leigh, was to serve a two-year ban from all sports after re-analysis of a sample showed up the presence of a banned substance. Acton subsequently said in an Instagram post: “You’re