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Public apology given after All Blacks star among players caught flouting lockdown
By Online Editors
The Super Rugby champion Crusaders have been forced to apologise after several members of their squad were spied flouting New Zealand's isolation rules.
All Blacks five-eighth Richie Mo'unga was the only player identified among a group passing and kicking a ball to each other at a Christchurch park on Monday.
Photographs of the players emerged on social media and the Crusaders confirmed they had breached their own rules around individual training during the coronavirus lockdown.
Under the country's strict controls, households have to stay within their own "bubble" and maintain social distancing from others.
Crusaders chief executive Colin Mansbridge said he had reprimanded the players involved, who reside in three different bubbles.
"They shouldn't have been at the same location," Mansbridge told Newshub. "It wasn't planned and they should know better. I have spoken to those involved, and will reinforce that again tonight."
The Crusaders have since released a statement to address the issue.
"The Crusaders are aware of some of our players training at Malvern Park in Christchurch today," the statement read.
"Management have spoken with the players involved, all of whom live within walking distance of Malvern Park. The club is confident this was not an organised training session among the group, but rather one group of flatmates training in their ‘bubble’ who were coincidentally joined by a second group. Meanwhile, one player completed running blocks individually. While these players made a conscious effort to observe physical distancing, they did share equipment by throwing and kicking a rugby ball among themselves."
Crusaders CEO Colin Mansbridge said: “In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is a time when our community needs to work together and look after one another, and our players are social leaders in that regard.
“The guidelines from the New Zealand Government are clear, and all of the players involved have acknowledged they made a mistake by sharing equipment. I am confident, I know there wasn’t a conscious effort to flout the rules, but this is a timely and valuable lesson for all. We have reiterated the guidelines to both the group directly involved, and our wider Crusaders squad to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
Watch: Episode 2 of Investec Super Rugby Isolation Nation.
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Latest Comments
Turn it up. Give me your john A game would ya!
Go to commentsI didn't really get the should tone from it, but maybe because I was just reading it as my own thoughts.
What I read it as was examples of how they played well enough in every game to be able to win it.
Yeah I dunno if Ben wouldn't see it that way (someone else would for sure need to point it out to him though), I'm more in the Ben not appreciating that those close losses werent one off scenarios camp. Sure you can look at dubious decisions causing them to have to play with 14 or 13 men at the death as viable reasons but even in the games they won without such difficulties they made a real struggle of it (compared to how good some of their first half play was). This kind of article where you trying to point out the 3 losses really would most likely have been wins only really makes sense/works when your other performances make those 3 games (or endings) stand out.
There might have been a sentence here and there to ensure some good comment numbers but when he's signing off the article by saying things like ..
and..
I don't really see it. Always making sure people are upto date with the SH standing/perspective! NZ went through some tough times with so many different perspectives and reasons why, but then it was.. amusing how.. behind everyone was once they turned a corner. More of these 'unfortunate' results returned against SA and France at the start of the RWC which made it extra tasty to catch other teams out when they did bring it. So that created some 'conscious' perspective that I just kept going and sharing re thoughts on similar predicaments of other teams, I had been really confident that Wallabies displays vs NZ were real, that the Argentines can backup their thing against Aus and SA (and so obviously the rest), and current one is that England are actually consistent and improving with their attack (which everyone should get onboard with), and I'm expecting a more dominant display against Japan (even though they should have more of their experienced internationals for this one) that highlights further growth from July. 👍
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