Folau faces end to Aussie career

WALLABIES superstar Israel Folau has two days to respond or face the sack after being served with a breach notice by Rugby Australia over his controversial social media posts.

RA CEO Raelene Castle said the RA integrity unit had deemed Folau had committed a “high level” breach of the players’ code of conduct which warranted termination of his contract.

“Israel has 48 hours to accept the sanction or have the matter sent to a code of conduct hearing,’ Castle said.

Folau remains stood down by RA over his religiously-motivated posts last week proclaiming hell awaits “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters”.

Asked if Folau was being punished for his religious beliefs, Castle said “this is not a religious discussion, this is a discussion around the employee-employer relationship.”

Castle said Folau had been unapologetic about the posts and his stance when she met with him last Friday. “That left us with no option but to move forward to the position that we’ve taken,” she said.

Folau had been warned, formally and repeatedly, about social media expectations after he made similar posts about a year ago.

“It was made clear to Israel in writing and verbally when I met with him last year that any social media posts or commentary that in any way were disrespectful to people because of their sexuality would result in disciplinary action,” Castle said. “Despite this, Israel has chosen to ignore this warning.”

Earlier, Wallabies coach Michael Cheika said Folau’s “disrespectful” comments would make it impossible to pick him in the national team, which is preparing for this year’s World Cup in Japan.