THE days of the tub of ice packed with beer in the dressing room are long gone. If there's ice, it's plastic-wrapped on to sore shoulders, knees or ankles. There are supplements to drink and hydration levels to reach; ice baths and cold swims at the beach the next day.
But, while the beer might be out of the dressing room, a night on "the drink" remains at the heart of footballing camaraderie and features front and centre in the first chapter of any book of league atrocities.
Sports physicians and psychologists are adamant that binge-drinking after a game runs completely counter to the advances in injury management that now dominate the dressing room.
Yet the binges continue, often with the tacit or explicit endorsement of clubs such as the Broncos, which kept their players on a tight leash in Sydney after they beat the Roosters last Friday night before setting them loose on their return to Brisbane.
Sports scientist Dr Ron Reid can't explain the contradiction. "That's one question I cannot answer. It just doesn't make any sense to me," he said. "There's enough evidence out there that alcohol, especially the consumption of large amounts of alcohol, produces changes that are potentially a problem - especially in recovery.
"It certainly doesn't make them [recovery programs] work very well. There is potentially a significant effect on their ability to recover, and it does make it a bit hypocritical to do both at the same time."
Players may often not even be aware of the damage they are doing, Sydney Swans medico Dr Nathan Gibbs suggested.
"After a game you have obvious injuries - which alcohol will make bleed more - and then you have minor injuries, which may not be apparent until the next day when you wake up and are sore," Gibbs said. "If you're drinking after the game, you don't even realise you've got them at the time you're drinking.
"The third aspect is delayed onset muscle soreness [DOMS]. Most of the recovery strategies people employ which involve hydration, good nutrition, ice baths, pool and saltwater recovery and massage are used to hasten recovery from DOMS to enable you to be as well prepared as possible for the next time you need to train so that you don't injure yourself.
"Obviously, the alcohol negates a lot of that. There's two reasons - obviously you're not doing the recovery strategies because you're drinking and, secondly, it makes the muscles swell and bleed more, which is exactly what you don't want to happen; which is why you're doing everything else."
Sports psychologist Jeff Bond said elite athletes often tried to rationalise their drinking and "think they can recover quickly because, for some reason, they're bigger, stronger, better, faster or more talented".
"One of their myths is to say, basically, we have to sacrifice so much to be good athletes, therefore we deserve this. Which is a load of rubbish because anybody who is any good at anything makes all sorts of sacrifices," he said. "The second myth is, 'We need to bond,' and that's been touted around by coaches, football administrators and by athletes themselves - particularly but not exclusively in the footy codes. That's a myth that needs exploding as well because the real bonding that takes place is on the field and the training track."
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