Riddle of All Blacks reaction to ‘bugged’ team room

FOR their Bledisloe Cup romp in Sydney last weekend, the All Blacks checked into a five-star hotel in beachside suburb Double Bay.

Their security staff carried out a sweep of the team room and found a ‘sophisticated listening device’ planted in a chair.

That was on the Monday.The police were not asked to investigate until late the following Friday.Why, you may well ask, did it take the New Zealand RFU five full days to call in the cops?

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key suggested the other day that the bug might have been an old one, left there for any one of many political and corporate conferences hosted by the hotel.

Clearly, that did not occur to the All Blacks’ management.

ARU chief executive Bill Pulver says he learnt about the alleged bugging from his Kiwi counterpart, Steve Tew, during the pre-match dinner that Friday evening. According to Pulver, Tew told him that he [Tew] felt “confident it wasn’t going to be an issue for public exposure”.

How odd, given that the All Blacks then made a proverbial song and dance about it. And how odd that Pulver should confess to being “shocked” because he had “never heard of the concept of listening devices in the world of rugby”.

Well, Sir Clive Woodward made a point of having all team rooms swept for bugs wherever England went during his seven years in charge. And the 2001 Lions claimed they had their lineout calls decoded because an agent or agents for the Wallabies filmed them in practice on the training ground during the week of the final Test.

They lost that on the last lineout Keith Wood threw to Martin Johnson at the front only for a then Australian novice, Justin Harrison, to steal it.

It cost the Lions the series.