What Wallaby fan said to Tui
It started with a sledge. But how did it end up like this?
The news Wallabies backrower Lukhan Tui is ‘‘unlikely’’ to travel with the team to South Africa and Argentina in coming weeks is a sad post-script to an incident involving a fan that could have been avoided.
Just days after Tui’s stepfather passed away, the highly rated forward is weighing up the possibility of taking a break from the game until the end of the year – something no-one in Australian rugby wants to see.
Criticism and this Wallabies team are almost synonymous. However, one fan’s vitriol overstepped the mark.
It began with Australian reserve Jack Maddocks. A man, wearing a Wallabies jersey, started hurling abuse out of nowhere at the 21-year-old. Maddocks is an unflappable young lad and knew it would be wiser to ignore the abuse.
However, for three to four minutes the man, described by someone nearby as ‘‘a complete knob’’, kept going.
‘‘You’re all f .... ing useless,’’ he yelled. ‘‘F .... ing disgraceful. Why don’t you play with some heart? You should all be f...ing ashamed.’’
For a fan to display this kind of anger goes to show just how much recent Wallabies’ form hurts some of those who love the game.
Maddocks didn’t know what to do, so decided to walk off.
Next, Folau Fainga’a and Adam Coleman became the targets. It was more of the same pent-up frustration being hurled at a couple of Australian players happy to take their medicine.
‘‘I get the discontent and you own that,’’ said Wallabies coach Michael Cheika after the match. ‘‘Words and abuse comes sometimes, that’s the way it is. You have to suck it up when you don’t play well and own that.’’
The man then went up the stairs and, according to a witness, ‘‘went straight at Lukhan’’. By this stage, other crowd members began pushing the man in question towards the exit. The Wallabies say Tui was upset after his sister was pushed over around about this time. There is no footage at this stage that shows Tui’s young sibling involved in the incident.
All of a sudden, Tui and the man were trying to grab each other. Had injured Australian player Samu Kerevi, a Wallabies official and others nearby not been present, those there believe things could have got very nasty.
Kerevi wrote on his Instagram story on Sunday: ‘‘Lukhan came in to help out because that guy was swearing around his family. That altercation only happened because the drunk fan told Lukhan to ‘play with some heart’. The fact he was even on the field speaks volume. For everyone throwing chat at my boy, shut your mouth.’’
Tui looked like a shattered man after a tough week and decided to tell team-mates in the sheds that night he wanted out for the rest of the year. He spent the evening with family in Queensland.
Rugby Australia is still investigating the incident and will review footage from the ground and Fox Sports, as well as a report prepared by the security company. The man was not ejected from the stadium but was spoken to by police.
The Wallabies depart on Saturday for Port Elizabeth. for a test against South Africa.