Tuipulotu’s alleged positive drug test will have HUGE ramifications

Sponsors hate having their names tarnished.  

For example in the case of Losi Filipo, Wellington Rugby buckled in part under threats sponsors would pull-out unless he was dumped. 

One global sponsor that takes a hard-line on its athletes taking drugs is Adidas. 

The International Association of Athletics Federation and Tyson Gay have recently had their lucrative deals put through their Bavarian shredder.   

So how will Kasper Rorsted (CEO Adidas) be feeling as he thumbs through Das Spiegel to find All Blacks lock Patrick Tuipulotu has reportedly been caught using a banned substance? 

 

Read the initial story here.   

What sort of drugs/chemical substances we don’t know at this stage.

One would presume ‘performance enhancing’ for example would be viewed in a very, very dim light. 

Were Tuipulotu to be found – these are only allegations at this stage – to be using a performance enhancing substance as opposed to getting caught-out smoking a joint whilst listening to Pink Floyd, this has the potential to develop into a major embarrassing issue for N.Z Rugby.

And they damn well know it. 

That’s why NZ Rugby and ’s local union. Auckland, have been plying the line since November that he’s simply had an "on-going personal matter".     

This from an entity which brandishes the words ‘standards’  and ‘professionalism’ like confetti from Richie McCaws wedding.  

What action will the International Rugby Board take? 

Protocols dictate they know the moment any professional player tests positive even for recreational use.

Especially one playing in the world’s top ranked team. 

The World Rugby dot org site is strangely silent? 

Perhaps they were trying to think of something more original than “on-going personal matter”? 

But now the story has broken.

 

This has legs, ten-times the size of Tuipulotu's.  

It will now run and run despite obvious attempts by N.Z Rugby to snuff-it-out and hide it in the closet.  

Steve Tew will be forced to front the media today. 

"Steve, when did you first know of this positive test?"

"Did Patrick play any games after the positive test was first reported?" 

"What sort of banned substances are we talking here Steve? Recreational or performance enhancing?"

Don't think you'll get a straight answer to any of these pertinent questions. 

Not right away.

But it will all come-out.  

This comes close after the failed Wellingtons Seven’s and my bet is Tew’s time is up.

 

Potentially this could be the most embarrassing thing to happen to N.Z Rugby in the professional era depending on what the banned substance was, when it was first discovered.  

Tarnishing the All Black name forever.

Up-Date Friday 10^th February: The B-Test for a performance enhancing drug came in negative. Apparently 1 positive + 1 negative = you are off the hook. I bet the cycling fraternity would look at this ‘benefit of the doubt’ decision and shake their heads. Sure, mistakes can occur in the testing process, but from the same sample? What are the chances? What exactly was the drug involved? Something you could innocently acquire off the Chemist shelf, or more nefarious akin to under-the-table body-building supplement? Kindly point it out to us on the World Anti-Doping Agency's 2016 Prohibited List.  Why call a positive drug test ‘personal reasons’ when the next time an All Black has to depart from a tour if say his child is sick, the public could think “that’s a smoke-screen”? Why wait so long for the B Sample to be tested? Why, when the news media askes these questions no-one can get a straight answer? One could feel they are hiding something were one was a nasty prick. Not me though.           

 

   

Has anyone on the Shirley Rugby Club Committee heard of Social Media or even got a Calendar?

A quick ‘google’ shows embezzlement is riff of late amongst South Island recreational sporting entities. 

Eric Lee recently had his grubby fingers dipping into the Queenstown Bowling Club. 

Tania Lind did the same to The Sunset Speedway in Westport.  

Now we’ve learned in today’s The Christchurch Press, Howard Morel has been diddling The Shirley Rugby Club. 

The difference between these three cases is when the funds were found to be missing the bowling club & the West Coast speedway correctly took their concerns to the police. 

But, not the Shirley Rugby Club. 

Oh, no.   

In a hark-back to the days of ‘what happens on tour, stays on tour’ The Shirley Rugby Club thought they could keep fraud of this scale ($200,000) their hush-hush deal quite.  

Un-bloody-believable.  

Make no bones about it The Shirly Rugby Club are the victims of a criminal undertaking. 

 

Betrayal on a massive scale from a life member. 

They deserve restitution and Howard Morel his day in court.

A serious crime has occurred here.

Were three teens to break-in & trash the Shirley Clubrooms and one was found to be a member of the club, would the committee tell the Police just to investigate the other two? 
 

Even when the ‘cat was out of the bag’ The Christchurch Press knew the frame-work of the crime, deal struck & they were about to publish the details -  they still naively tried to obfuscate.

“He’s (Morel) away on leave of absence.” 

Like fuck! 

Can they see how this smoke-screen looks to an outsider?

The Shirley Rugby Club Committee handling of this affair have made laughing-stocks of their club and showed yet-again that N.Z Rugby Clubs function in a decades-old bubble. 

It’s 1977 down in their patch, disco is in its hey-day, long side-burns are in.  

 

All Black Hot-Head Allegedly Starts Brawl and then Scarpers.

Malakai Fekitoa admits he has anger management issues. 

Yet, he wants us to believe he didn’t start a fight at a Seven’s tournament back in his own stomping ground over Christmas. 

 

Writer makes 'ah-hmm' noise as if removing something from his throat.   

LINK

Then if reports are correct does a runner and blames it on petty jealousy. 

I know who I believe. 

The locals.    

 

Footnote: Great start to the year guys. Two articles in two weeks and the season hasn’t even begun.

N.Z Rugby should start an enquiry to get to the bottom of this. Oh that’s right - they have. Not that you’d know it. It's looking like a bumper year for me.

Chiefs Players trash talk Traffic Wardens

 

Imagine if you went up to the daughter, sister or wife of a Chiefs player going about their job and called them cunts, useless and lazy?

 

What would you expect to happen if they heard you? 

Well more than what happened to a group of Chiefs players that allegedly used the same profanities to two female Hamilton traffic wardens, after getting ticketed.   

N.Z Rugby’s Respect & Responsibility Initiative is a farce.

 

Those Chiefs players that gobbed-off at the traffic wardens and this ever-burgeoning blog being a living testament to this.       

Rugby Mentality Divides South Island Township

The Kurow rugby community is apparently 'devastated'' by the crash that occurred after drunken members went on ‘the ran tan’ after pissing up at their clubrooms. 

Cue ‘Yeah Right’ meme.  

The drunk idiot driver at the wheel that night, ex North Otago rep Regan Laughton, crashed the vehicle resulting in the death of Jarrad Blackler (23) and injuries to all his fellow rugby-club passengers. One of which was in hospital for 10 weeks.  

Kevin Malcolm the coach of the Kurow Rugby Club throws at us that old-standard (quote) ''Somehow we need to find a way to make community changes to prevent this from happening again, because it is a community thing.''  

No admission from Malcolm that the club could have prevented an intoxicated driver to get behind the wheel with five passengers after pissing-up at their clubrooms.   

No talk of a club policy that involves a nominated sober driver.  

The booze in part came from his premises.  

The family, supporters of the victim are up against this ingrained small town ‘rugby’ mentality. 

This after-all is the township that is raising funds to build a statue of Richie McCaw.   

Does anyone think tragedies like this are merely the collateral for living a rural lifestyle?  

Remind me – it’s 1916, eh?  

The fact the seemingly unrepentant Laugthon escaped a jail term is another issue that sticks in one’s craw.      

As does the matter of this rugby club still being able to sell alcohol.

Same with 'the local' that tanked-up 'the tanked-up' waved them goodnight.   

If the Kurow community really cared, they would now be building a statue to Jarrad Blackler and not McCaw. 

So this young-man didn’t die in vain and this could be a fitting permanent memorial of the folly of drink-driving.

Looking after your mates. 

Fat chance.

This is rugby heartland.

N.Z Rugby has normalised abnormal behaviour

What a joke. 

A token panel to review toxic rugby culture. 

A dead cert is the major conclusion to come from this farce will be a lack of women in positions of power.  

Like that will stop street thuggery at one o’clock on a Sunday morning. 

Why is this review even necessary when the N.Z public has been told consistently the off-field actions of N.Z Rugby players are merely representative of society as a whole? 

That’s to say other males this age get-up-to exactly the same criminal activities as professional rugby players. 

The thinly veiled insinuation from rugby apologists, tabloid journalists at the likes of the N.Z Herald, is our cricket and soccer professionals etc. conduct themselves in exactly the same fashion as rugby players.    

We have been fed the line that what rugby players get up-to in terms of drunken violence, sexual abuse etc. is a microcosm of life in New Zealand.

Only it isn’t. 

That’s why no other sport deems it necessary to have a similar review. 

N.Z Rugby has normalised abnormal behaviour to the point any conclusions made by this panel will be symbolic at best.

Mark my words this blog will be as busy as normal: review or no review.  

 

 

Girl Basher ‘Big Man’ Losi Filipo sentenced to supervision

Another ‘Great Out Jail Free Card’ issued to a rugby starling by the weak at the knees N.Z judicial system. 

A paltry nine months supervision.  

Weekly meetings to be held at 7’s Bar?   

Nothing positive has come out of this sorry affair.

The victims have not received justice. 

Still N.Z Rugby fans can rejoice whilst at the same time the public shakes their heads and hope they are not on the receiving end of a similar beating from a street thug like Losi Filipo.   

Odds on Filipo will appear somewhere on the field once his token sentence has been completed.

 

He'll be able to continue to taunt his victims. 

 

That’s the way it works in New Zealand.