Ex-Highlander comes clean on 2012 party
Two ABs knocked out, fires lit
Drunken parties with the odd furniture fire chucked in aren’t that out of the ordinary in Dunedin but two All Blacks getting knocked out cold in the garden is far from the norm.
Controversial former England flanker James Haskell has recounted the tale of the unhinged madness that went down when he hosted a party – at the house he rented from former Highlanders and Manu Samoa player Seilala Mapusua – the day after the Highlanders were knocked out of Super Rugby contention in 2012.
The feral party finished when police were called by Haskell, shortly before he caught a taxi to hospital and after Jimmy Cowan and Lima Sopoaga had both had their lights punched out, according to Haskell’s book What A Flanker.
Haskell, who returned to Dunedin to play Super Rugby in a oneoff season for the Highlanders, a year after he faced allegations of sexual harassment when in town with England during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, now describes the party as one of his ‘‘worst ideas’’ ever.
Since his retirement in 2019, Haskell has planned a career in mixed martial arts that was over before it began via back surgery, made a start on a new gig as a stand-up comedian, taken up being a DJ and written two books on his playing career.
The first, What A Flanker, takes in the fallout from the 2011 sexual harassment allegations and the wild party at the end of the 2012 Super Rugby season as seen by host Haskell.
‘‘On hearing a commotion coming from the garden, I wandered outside to discover they’d stacked some of Mapusua’s garden furniture under the eaves of the house and set it on fire, along with some of my clothes,’’ Haskell wrote.
‘‘I obviously lost the plot, and as I was in mid-flow, Lima Sopoaga jumped me and smashed an egg on my head.
‘‘The yolk hadn’t even had time to start dripping down my face when I charged through what was now a raging fire, like some deranged stuntman, and knocked Lima cold with an overhand right,’’ Haskell wrote in What A Flanker.
‘‘I thought I’d killed him.’’ In return, Haskell then had his nose ‘‘split’’ open by a close friend of Sopoaga’s within the Highlanders group – who the colourful former England test star chose not to name.
Things then got weirder and increasingly violent.
Haskell wrote ‘‘for reasons he probably didn’t even know’’,
Cowan punched Highlanders teammate Elliot Dixon who returned serve to bust open Cowan’s eye and leave him unconscious.
‘‘Now we had two blokes out cold in the garden and it was like a scene from that New Zealand film Once Were Warriors, except instead of someone shouting ‘Cook the man some f...ing eggs’ someone was smashing raw eggs on my forehead,’’ Haskell wrote.
When those ‘‘who were conscious’’ refused to leave the party, Haskell wrote that he then called police and told an operator: ‘‘I’ve got an out-of-control party at my house, which might burn down at any minute – get around here now’.’’
Police arrived and moved the guests on, taking some home themselves.
‘‘Now it was just me and Jimmy
Cowan in the house, me with my busted nose and him with a big cut above his eye,’’ Haskell wrote.
‘‘It looked like we’d just gone 12 rounds. Having put the flames out – which wasn’t easy – and finally persuading Cowan to get lost, I got a taxi to A&E. Luckily the doctor was an English rugby fan and did a beautiful stitching job.’’
Haskell returned to the house to find vomit in the kitchen and another attempted fire at the other end of the garden.
But what surprised him the most was when he saw his Highlanders team-mates at another function before he travelled home.
‘‘It was as if nothing had happened,’’Haskell wrote.
‘‘What the hell were you guys thinking?’ . . . ‘Oh, it was only a bit of fun’.’’