Rugby News

Regrets? Mike Tindall has a few about the disastrous Rugby World Cup campaign last Autumn, not least getting ridiculously drunk on THAT infamous night out in Queenstown.

In the midst of all the drinking, the dwarf-throwing, the hassling of hotel workers and jumping off boats that went on amongst the England team in New Zealand, Tindall was arguably the subject of the biggest controversy after allegedly motor-boating an attractive female on a night out in Queenstown that dogged the entire World Cup campaign.

It’s not an advisable thing for anyone to be caught doing, but when you’re married into royalty, as Tindall is; it’s a fairly big no-no. The cueball Gloucester centre, however, felt that he was made a scapegoat for all that went wrong in New Zealand and believes that the off-field events have permanently tarnished his reputation.

"I've stayed away from talking about what happened because people have their fixed opinions and you can't compete when people have already made up their minds," Tindall is quoted as saying in The Guardian.

"Obviously it wasn't ideal for me to end up as hammered as I was. That's a given. It's just that the reaction to my mistake turned into a rollercoaster that I couldn't control. But the people close to me, those I love, know what actually happened, and it just wasn't some enormous crisis."

Maybe poor old Mike has been done hard by, but he's right about struggling to ever live down what happened a few months back.

Thankfully for the rest of us, his behaviour has inspired plenty of hilarious if cheap jokes at his expense, such as the ingenious sign displayed in the crowd at a Munster game last December.