Disgraced rugby league star Luke O’Donnell pleads guilty to stashing cocaine in his underpants

Luke O’Donnell has admitted to hiding cocaine in his underpants during a police bust just months after shocking footage emerged of the former NRL star being tasered for threatening cops.

Luke O’Donnell has admitted to hiding cocaine in his underpants during a police bust just months after shocking footage emerged of the former NRL star being tasered for threatening cops.

The 38-year-old pleaded guilty to drug possession at Waverley Local Court on Friday as prosecutors withdrew charges of cocaine supply and dealing in the proceeds of crime.

The ex State of Origin player was fined $2200 after police nabbed him with 3.83 grams of coke on a Saturday night in Bondi Junction last August.

Origin star Luke O’Donnell.

Officers spotted the Clovelly man hop into a woman’s car near the Meriton apartments on Grafton Street just before 7pm on August 10 and pulled the Holden Wagon over, agreed facts state.

The pair claimed they were heading out to dinner but cops became suspicious O’Donnell was hoarding drugs and took him to be strip searched at a nearby disabled toilet.

Once inside the bathroom, the former Roosters premiership winner reached down his pants and “produced some rolled up paper from his underwear containing several bags of white powder”, court documents state.

Luke O’Donnell has admitted to hiding cocaine in his underpants during a police bust.

In January O’Donnell was convicted of four offences including assaulting a female senior constable after holding a knife to his own chin in his own home.

The police had been called to his Clovelly unit last June by O’Donnell’s parents, who became concerned when O’Donnell started “rambling” and hung out a three-storey window.

Footage from a police body camera shows six officers, O’Donnell’s parents and his girlfriend repeatedly begging him to calm down.

“Mate settle down, you have woke up the whole building,” his father Ross pleads with him in the doorway when police arrive.

“Can they come in and see you. Can they come in and talk to you at least?”

But O’Donnell refused and, despite the efforts of police, tensions escalate to threats.

“Listen here you c**t, you’re not putting handcuffs on me I’ll f**king smash the f**k out of you. Get off me,” he says in the video as police struggle to subdue him.

“C**t get off me, go back to Goulburn police school you p**ck.”

Police eventually deployed a taser with one officer saying on the video “he’s too aggressive” and it’s “too dangerous”.

Former Sydney Roosters backrower Luke OÕDonnell leaving Downing Centre court todaY. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

His girlfriend could be seen screaming and crying.

His lawyer in January told Downing Centre Local Court that O’Donnell had struggled to “adjust to life away from football” since his 2013 retirement and separation from his wife.

Defence barrister Stephen Lawrence applied for the charges to be dismissed on mental health grounds as O’Donnell had been diagnosed with major depression but it was rejected by Magistrate Philip Stewart.

“He was not getting his way with police and he was angry about that,” said Magistrate Stewart, calling O’Donnell a “powerfully-built man”.

O’Donnell was fined $1600 and placed on a one year community corrections order which will require him to abstain from drugs and be supervised for nine months.