Something’s bugging NZ Rugby

The Sydney bug and Chiefs stripper incident continue to remain on the radar of New Zealand Rugby who are adamant they’re sweeping neither under the carpet.

NZR chief executive Steve Tew addressed both controversies in his Monday postboard meeting conference call with the media, though admitted he remained limited in what he could say on both.

The discovery of a state-ofthe-art listening device in a team room at the All Blacks’ hotel in Sydney during the week of the opening Bledisloe remained an ongoing concern for NZR, though at present they were bound by the police investigation across the Tasman which had to be allowed to play out.

‘‘The matter is simply in the hands of the Australian police and we’re awaiting their determination,’’ Tew said initially. ‘‘What we know we’ve told you.’’

Then the NZ rugby boss was asked if the fact the device was discovered to have a short-term battery life, and thus to have been clearly aimed at the All Blacks, raised any additional concerns.

‘‘I’m not going to speculate whether it was aimed at us or not. Someone much more qualified than I can come to those conclusions and we’ll take that advice,’’ he said.

But Tew did hint that Sydney had not been the first time the All Blacks had suspected they were being listened in on by interested parties.

‘‘The very fact we scanned a room for a bug would suggest we are suspicious that there is motivation from a variety sources to try and glean information that gives people some advantage in something they are doing,’’ he added.

But as to whom that might be, Tew said he would leave that for the conjecture of others.

‘‘It’s unfortunate confirmation of our speculations, but professional sport is a big business and has a lot of people very interested in what’s going on, both inside and outside of the game.’’

However Tew did concede that the All Blacks had erred in not taking the matter to the attention of the police earlier than they did.

‘‘Yes, it did take five days, but we handed it immediately to the hotel who initiated their own investigation. There will be some things for us to learn from this process and probably the delay in giving it to the police is something we would reflect on and say we could have done better.

‘‘There was nothing sinister about it − we were simply relying on the hotel to find out what was going on.’’

As for the Chiefs, and the controversy surrounding their Mad Monday treatment of a stripper at the Okoroire hot pools hotel, Tew confirmed his organisation was nearing the end of a comprehensive investigation.

‘‘We’ve got complete confidence in the work being done, and we would hope to bring that to a conclusion some time very soon.

‘‘There are one or two further interviews to be conducted, and once we’ve done that we will share what we have found.’’

Tew confirmed a review into both the men’s and women’s Olympic sevens programme was under way, conceding results had fallen well short of expectations.

‘‘We set a very aspirational target of two gold medals, so it was disappointing.’’ Relations still strong B7