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RFU statement: Tom Curry and Bongi Mbonambi
By Liam Heagney
The RFU have given its full support to England back row Tom Curry for raising the racially abusive behaviour he allegedly experienced when playing in last Saturday’s Rugby World Cup semi-final.
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It was announced on Thursday that a World Rugby investigation had closed as they found insufficient evidence at this time to proceed with charges against Springboks hooker Bongi Mbonambi.
The statement read: “The RFU fully support Tom Curry in raising the racially abusive behaviour he experienced whilst playing for England against South Africa.
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“During last Saturday’s match between England and South Africa, Tom Curry reported to the referee that he had been racially abused by Mbongeni Mbonambi.
“The subsequent World Rugby investigation were informed by Tom Curry that he had also been the victim of the same abuse, from the same player, in the 2022 autumn Test. World Rugby have today announced their decision not to bring charges in respect of either incident.
“The RFU are deeply disappointed by the decision taken by World Rugby. The decision not to put the evidence before an independent disciplinary panel has denied the disciplinary process the opportunity to hear Tom Curry’s voice and to independently assess his account of these serious events, together with the other available evidence.
“In their continued full support of Tom, the RFU together with the England squad, condemn the disgusting abuse he and his family has received on social media as a result of his having had the courage to put unacceptable behaviour that has no place in society or on the rugby field, in the public eye.
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“Abuse of any kind is not acceptable and goes against the core values of rugby.
“It is important that it is safe and acceptable for everyone involved in rugby union to raise concerns, and the RFU continue to encourage everyone to report any unacceptable behaviour in the game.”
Despite the online abuse, Curry was named on Wednesday by England coach Steve Borthwick to start this Friday’s bronze medal match in Paris versus Argentina.
Mbonambi, meanwhile, was included on Thursday morning in the Springboks XV to start Saturday’s World Cup final versus New Zealand.
Shame…..poor Curry……Bongi is nasty to him……RFU is deeply disappointed…….lol……I thought you would be used to disappointed by this time…..😉
Curry must be the biggest c*** if he’s been called out twice now. He certainly looks it!
“The RFU fully support Tom Curry in raising the racially abusive behaviour he experienced whilst playing for England against South Africa.”
Well there is a ton of tape from the 38 cameras and 16 microphones, plus plenty of witnesses. And, whilst it is hard to prove a negative, this is pretty close. The cameras were not magically switched off at any point.
Many sensible people will reasonably conclude that this was a cynical move by Curry. And many people that understand the impact of false allegations will sympathize with Bongi.
Someone should explain the presumption of innocence to the RFU folks.
- Tom Curry reported to the referee that he had been racially abused by Mbongeni Mbonambi +
what I heard was the following: “Sir, sir, what if their hooker calls me a white c@#$?”to me that is stating a POSSIBILITY in the future, not a factual allegation of something which actually had happened ….
strange story …..
I still wantbto discuss the fact that an English public school tosser wants to claim racial prejudice…. That's like HF Verwoerd claiming a moral superiority because Jacob Zuma is corrupt.
We started with an extremely implausible allegation, and ended with an even more implausible "no evidence". It does not reflect well on Curry.
If it took place then Curry presumably could identify the moment in the game. Given that both players are forwards it is more or less certain that this would have happened close to play, and there are 38 TV cameras in the semi-finals, many of which would have been trained on near-the-ball action, so they would have caught the moment from various angles. There are 16 pitch microphones and 5 more atmosphere microphones. Additionally there were witnesses all around. It's not that there is no evidence, but that none of the huge corpus of video, audio and witness evidence supports the allegation.
Abuse is never OK, and we should all stand by Curry in that regard. Nonetheless, his actions are hard to interpret in a way that is complimentary to him. Many will look at this story and reasonably conclude that it was probably cynical behavior on Curry's part.
British press doing a great job at turning Curry into a victim spearheaded by the oh so self-righteous but simultaneously dirtiest cesspit Dailymail.
"The RFU fully support Tom Curry in raising the racially abusive behaviour he experienced whilst playing for England against South Africa." That is pretty slanderous and crucially, the word 'alleged' is missing.
Oh shame poor Curry feel heart sorry for the guy that deliberately tried to ruin a man’s reputation to get an advantage in the scrum, next the RFU will campaign to ban the Afrikaans language as it offends their players boo hoo
“The RFU are deeply disappointed by the decision taken by World Rugby. The decision not to put the evidence before an independent disciplinary panel has denied the disciplinary process the opportunity to hear Tom Curry’s voice and to independently assess his account of these serious events, together with the other available evidence.” That’s absolutely dreadful. “…to independently assess…” is a split infinitive. Awful grammar.
ABuSe of Any KInd iS noT ACCEptAblE anD goES AGaInsT the CoRe ValuEs OF rUgBy