Rugby is the loser

In less time that it takes to re-read the newspaper headlines, French club rugby has done more to entrench the inherent image of a booze-soaked, coke-snorting, testosterone-driven brand of brutishness than any concerted campaign alone could possibly have done.

Simply put, the game in France has shot itself in the foot, reloaded an let off yet another round.

The incidents which sparked this were not a loutish badgering of a stripper by Chiefs players at a doubtless booze-soaked private party in a rural pub.

Or even, for that matter, an extremely ill-considered tryst by scrumhalf Aaron Smith, in his All Black travelling gear nogal, with a mystery woman in a disabled toilet at Christchurch airport the day after a Test. Smith’s tearful apologies to his partner, his family and his friends served to add even further embarrassment to a sordid chapter in recent New Zealand rugby history.

The recent revelations are far more serious and subject to criminal charges. New Zealand superstar former Test flyhalf Dan Carter was pulled over in central Paris near the Champs-Elysees and failed a drink-driving test

His French Top 14 club, Racing 92, pay the legendary pivot an annual salary of £1.4 million in a three-year contract which takes Carter above Australian Matt Giteau on rugby’s rich list and makes him the only rugby player earning in excess of £1 million a year.

Another Racing 92 All Black, 77-cap lock Ali Williams, and Toulon’s former Wallaby James O’Connor were arrested in Paris in possession of cocaine.

The pair, presently playing for French clubs Racing 92 and Toulon respectively, were stopped at around 5am outside a night club near the Champs-Elysees and found to be in possession of two grams of the illegal drug.

Now, six Grenoble players, including two Irishmen, two New Zealanders and an Australian, were detained on Wednesday following a rape complaint.

Prop Denis Coulson and centre Chris Farrel, both from Ireland, Australian lock Peter Kimlin and New Zealand back row men Rory Grice and Dylan Hayes, were detained, along with French hooker Loick Jammes, after a young woman alleged she had been raped by the players after meeting them at a nightclub in Bordeaux following their Top 14 match against Bordeaux-Begles on March 11.

It is, in short, an appalling list of criminal allegations and rugby is assuredly the loser.