There's a scandal in New Zealand rugby league circles because players like to gangbang with groupies? How very quaint!

As I describe in my book, here in Canada partying with hockey players has long been a rite of passage for teenage girls.

The players roared into town in their team buses and groups of us girls hung out around their hotels looking eager until one of them asked if we’d like to party. We said yes, they said Ok, and smuggled us into one of their rooms.

The players called us Puck Bunnies when they were being polite and Dirty Girls, sometimes to our faces, when they weren't. Depended mostly on whether they were about to screw us or had already screwed us. That’s the level of respect they had.

Hockey players aren’t romantic. I remember one night three of us groupies slipped into their hotel through a back door and ended up in a room with nine guys. They gave us beers in plastic cups, pulled our clothes off, lined us up next to each other on the bed and screwed us. They wouldn't let us leave until just before curfew or the last guy couldn't get it up any more. Whichever came first. Didn't even ask our names.

Most hockey players are crude and uneducated, sort of slightly more sophisticated Don Cherrys.  I soon realized that apart from their hard bodies and fame — which gave us boasting rights with girlfriends — there was nothing to recommend them.

In fact, you haven’t lived until you wake up with half a dozen snoring hockey goons who don’t shower regularly and you look over at the night table and see six sets of false teeth grinning at you from water glasses.

Maybe this is what athletes really mean when they say they play as a team. Like Alexandre Dumas's truly sexy musketeers — one for all, all for one.

As I say, a rite of passage. It was exciting and dangerous and would have horrified our parents if they'd known. But we grew up and out of it without any harm and went on to hunt the individual rather than the team.


(Samantha Jones is a Canadian journalist publishing her erotic memoir at www.lulu.com)