Monday’s Rugby News has bad news for lovers of rugby players who look like Annie Lennox, Eastwood to be rolling in the dosh, hype from the Scottish camp, and what the Rebels owner reckons should happen to Super.
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O’Connor A Goner
Annie Lennox James O’Connor has been done for attempting to buy cocaine in Paris, the Daily Telegraph reports. Ol’ mate spent Satdi night in a frog slammer after coppers cuffed O’Connor, who was arrested along with teammate, former All Black Ali Williams (who plays for Racing 92).
According to the popo, the two were arrested while buying cocaine from two suspected drug dealers. Plain clothes officers saw 6 ft 8 Williams in a car with the two suspects while O’Connor was outside and appeared to be acting as a(n inconspicuous?) lookout, police said.
When they were challenged, Williams attempted to get rid of the cocaine by throwing it away (classic move), added the police source who said the two players had clearly been drinking.
This comes from the bloke who only two weeks ago said this “I believe I have matured. I admit I’ve made mistakes in the past.”. (although really, is doing cocaine that bad?)
JO’C is currently in the middle of contract talks, with his boss Mourid Boudjellal saying:
“I won’t speak to him on Saturday. It does seem as though there has been wrongdoing,” Boudjellal said. “But even when you kill someone you still have a hearing first. That is how it must be.”
The Top 14 bosses have wagged their finger at O’Conner and Williams, with the latter also being suspended indefinitely by the club.
Meanwhile, this news means that Ben Barba will probably make his debut for Toulon on the weekend.
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Woodie$
Eastwood president Brett Papworth has been blasting this little ditty the past few days, after negotiating a $30m sale of the club’s ground.
The Venerable GeeRob reports that Eastwood are in advanced negotiations with North Ryde RSL* to sell T.G. Milner, with the six-hectare site expected to fetch up to $30 million.
The deal ain’t done yet, but Papworth all those dollarydoos will locked in an interest-generating vault labelled “Don’t Touch”, the plan being the club can live off that interest.
“You make it so that, if in 20 years’ time, a bunch of greedy people decide they want to do something with it, they can’t. The game is littered with people who’ve had windfalls and spent it all,” Papworth said.
Papworth said there were many “boxes to tick” but that all parties (the NSWRU, for one, has to ok the sale too) had been briefed on the process and the club’s intentions.
“We’ve had no relationship with our rugby community for a long, long time, because we’ve had nothing to give them. Most of the time they’ve got more money than we do. It enables us to start to form a relationship and do a bit of work.”
*In NSW, and QLD too I think, RSLs are massive operations, that give back to the community and veterans by loading the joint with pokies, garish carpet and sometimes surprisingly decent grub.
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A Sequel To Braveheart
What’s with Northern Hemisphere teams and thinking they can beat anyone all the time once they beat other shitty Northern Hemisphere teams 3 times in a row?
Well, Scotland beat Wales for the first time in 10 years on the weekend, and now reckon they can stick it to England. Hopefully.
“If we’re on a roll, we’ll take it!” Scotland coach Vern Cotter said, says The Guardian. “That’s a joke, obviously. (Kiwi humour, everyone).
“We know how hard Twickenham is. These experiences for these young players are great. John [Barclay, captain in the absence of Greig Laidlaw] has done a great job steadying the ship. You can see some of the skill sets that have been worked on coming off.
But that may be the record [equalling] game for England, so there’ll be a lot of things to play for. There’s a number of reasons why we need to get up and prepare well for that game.”
“We’ll have a look at them,” Barclay added. “We can mix it with anyone. I’m not going to make any big predictions.
“We have beaten Ireland, who are a very good team, and we have beaten Wales, who are a very good team. We believe we can beat anyone.”
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Rebel Reckons
Another day, another hot take on how Super should be set up.
This time it’s from Rebels owner Andrew Cox, and he talked to Wayne Smith at the Australian.
“Our purpose is to deliver to our fans, to our members, a quality product, that’s what they’re buying into,” Cox began.
“But it also shows the confused state that parts of rugby are in: we’re either a fully professional organisation that is there to make a profit and to deliver bums on seats and passionate fan engagement or we’re just a feeder for the Wallabies or the All Blacks.”
Ooh, zing!
“It should not be a time-filler until the Test season starts. We are the professional showcase of rugby in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan and Argentina and we need to be operating at that elite level. And by being successful in the professional space we’ll develop players who could get picked for the Wallabies or the All Blacks or whoever else.”
And Cox, the owner of the only privately-run Aussie Super team, ain’t finished there. “Name me a single professional sporting body in the world that goes into recess for a month in the middle of its season.”
To keep it short, Cox reckons that Super should just cut back to Australia and NZ (and maybe Japan), and the South Africans should bugger off to Europe.
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