Q: What’s green and gold and smells like a steaming pile of dumpster?
A: The Australian Rugby Union team.
Six Wallabies of unquenchable thirst and questionable judgment have been dropped with the velocity of a yard glass covered in Vaseline, stood down from this weekend’s clash against Scotland for their part in an unsanctioned mid-week booze-fest following the Wallabies’ 32-15 victory over Ireland in Dublin last week.
Nick Cummins, Adam Ashley-Cooper, Tatafu Polota-Nau, Benn Robinson and Liam Gill will sit out against Scotland this week, while prop Paddy Ryan will serve his ban the following week as the Wallabies are required to have at least four props on the bench for their clash against Scotland. A further nine players were reprimanded; Dave Dennis, Kane Douglas, Saia Fainga’a, Bernard Foley and Nick Phipps were handed written sanctions and Scott Fardy, Mike Harris, Ben McCalman and Nic White were handed verbal sanctions, equating to a staggering fifteen members of the green and gold receiving formal reprimands for “inappropriate levels of alcohol”, according to Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie.
McKenzie said internal player protocol was to be enforced at all costs.
“Let’s be clear: these are internal sanctions and aren’t a result of any complaints or reports of inappropriate or sinister behaviour while our players were out,” he said. “Instead, we have chosen to address an issue that has come up internally and we are now being up-front about it. We’ve done this because we need to continually reinforce the need for our players to make smart decisions to benefit the team.”
“For us, this is a great opportunity to circle the wagons and recalibrate our behaviours to get back on track off the field. I am disappointed on a personal level, but firm action is the best outcome when presented with a scenario like this. You need to deal with issues to ensure everyone can be accountable for their actions,” he continued. “The players involved have accepted the outcomes and we’ll concentrate on moving on and making the best of the situation. Our entire focus remains on beating Scotland.”
We get that there is a base level of professionalism to uphold when you are a professional athlete receiving stupendous amounts of money to do what you love most and that drinking beer out of your shoe and eating cheeseburgers at 4am can’t possibly help your performance. In their defense, though – Dublin. It ain’t the inebriation epicentre of the universe for nothing.
Via SMH
