Wow, just when we thought we couldn’t feel any worse about Saturday’s loss.
Losing by four tries to nil and 32-15 in a game that many thought we would win was bad enough, but now we know that six members of the Australian team have been stood down after going on the tear during the week. A further nine players have been disciplined.
Nick Cummins (pictured scoring above), Adam Ashley-Cooper, Tatafu Polota-Nau, Benn Robinson and Liam Gill will all sit out the game with Scotland next week after hitting the town on Tuesday night ahead of Wednesday’s rest day. A sixth player, Ben Ryan, will miss the Wales game as the Aussies need to have at least four props available at Murrayfield.
Australia coach Ewan McKenzie said: “Everyone in our squad is required to comply with and adhere to high standards of ethical conduct both on and off the field. Those standards were compromised in the lead-up to Saturday’s victory over Ireland with a group of players making the decision to stay out late and consume inappropriate levels of alcohol during the early hours of Wednesday morning. 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.
“Instead, we have chosen to address an issue that has come up internally and we are now being upfront about it.”
A further five Wallabies (Dave Dennis, Kane Douglas, Saia Fainga’a, Bernard Foley and Nick Phipps) have had written sanctions handed to them while four more (Scott Fardy, Mike Harris, Ben McCalman and Nic White) have just escaped with a verbal warning.
After quite a few issues with alcohol among the Aussie squad’s members in recent years, this tough new policy by McKenzie is a sign that things are different now and is probably welcome news for any Wallabies fan.
But from an Irish point of view, the pain of Saturday’s defeat certainly isn’t helped by the news that so many of the Aussies had a big night out and still battered us on Saturday.
This morning’s video review session probably just got a little bit worse for the Irish team.
