Rugby heads in denial about drink drinking plague

The sad facts are there for all to see.

Were a brave media outlet in the mainstream media to call-out rugby’s sad and often lethal role when it comes to drink driving, they risk potentially their largest draw-card pulling their coverage in reprisal.   

 

That's why you see nothing in our largest papers.

They prefer instead to be cheer-girls for the sport.

Report on celeb weddings and a players favourite music rather than death and mayhem on our roads after clubroom piss-ups.  

All of which are down to rugby culture of entitlement, that exists from top to bottom.

Here’s but a brief recent run-down on N.Z’s rugby players love of boozing and getting behind the wheel. 

Just how many grieving parents, friends will it take for the sport to wake-up?  

2014: Auckland's ITM Cup rugby coach Wayne Pivac was banned from driving after he was caught drink-driving on Waitangi Day

 

2014:  Twenty three year old Keao players Vernon Lawrence-Samuels and Ryan Wikaira died in a head-on accident after consuming alcohol and smoking a joint following rugby training.

 

2014: Jack Henry Ballantyne and Tui Huruata Candish-Thompson died on May 11, 2012, after crashing into a power pole at high speed near Hinds, south of Ashburton. The coroner stated the deaths could have been avoided if a culture of mixing drinking with sport was not so prevalent. The two teenagers had visited the Hinds Tavern after rugby training, which was/is(?) the norm.

 

2015:   Auckland Blues rugby player Tevita Li was discharged without conviction for driving with an excess blood alcohol level. The judge said ‘a conviction against your name would have consequences in the sense that people who are involved in the recruitment of rugby players look with disdain on people with convictions, regardless of what they're for’.

 

2016: Troy Favell pleads guilty to a count of driving with excess breath alcohol. The 2nd time he’s been done.   

 

2016: Tragedy strikes the small South Island town of Kurow when Jarrad Blackler (23) dies from his injuries, the victim of a drunk driver. All passengers of the vehicle had been pissing-up at the local rugby club.

 

2016: Rene Ranger convicted of drink driving.

 

2017: Two words ‘Dan’ and ‘Carter’.  

 

2017: Two men lucky to be alive after a serious car crash involving two vehicles, had been celebrating after a long-running social rugby clash in South Canterbury. Police describe ‘beer bottles scattered all over the paddock’.