The one week suspension New Zealand’s Adam Thomson received as punishment for dancing a tap-dance on the head of Scotland’s Alasdair Strokosch, makes a mockery of any rules the IRB wishes to enforce. Yet another shining example of how New Zealand rugby players are measured by completely different standards than the rest of the rugby word.
Over the years we have had too many incidences of All Black players being treated like royalty and the All Blacks being regarded as above the normal rules that governs the rest of the rugby world. This is just one of a long list of All Black players that gets away with gross miss-conduct with a slight reprimand as punishment, while other players, from the rest of the rugby world, can suffer career ending banning and sanctions for similar offences. This disgraceful conduct by the IRB the same weekend that Australia’s Rob Simmons received a eight week ban for spear tackling Franc’s Yannick Nyanga. Who will forget Brad Thorn's season ending, and nearly career ending, spear-tackle on John Smit in 2008. What did Thorn get? A one week suspension. Sounds familiar?
Then you have people like Bakkies Botha and Schalk Burger that just have to give an opponent an ugly look and the citing officers and disciplinary committee members pee in their pants. What about poor Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu from Samoa that was slapped with a three week ban for sending around “nasty” Twitter messages about Owen Farrel? He should have kick Farrel in the head, that would have given him a lighter punishment according to this ruling.
This, as well as the IRB’s double standards regarding player eligibilities is now getting to the point of being laughable. New Zeeland rugby troll especially the Pacific islands, but also the other rugby playing countries, and scoop up talented youngsters by the ton load, and miraculously find New Zeeland ancestry for them to make them eligible to wear the Black jersey, at all levels of representative rugby. Thirteen players in the All Blacks last World Cup squad were born outside New Zeeland. Enough said! Yet all other players are bound by certain strictly policed regulations and restrictions in terms of residency and ancestry before they are eligible to play for an adopted. What a joke!
Let us add to this the numerous incidences of favouritism and blatant cheating by New Zeeland referees and the entire debacle becomes rather sick. May I be so bold as to mention Bryce Lawrence and co? Lawrence is regarded as a national treasure in New Zeeland! No wonder, he did ensure a much easier final for his countries team in the last World Cup, by openly and shamelessly shafting our chances. Yet no repercussions from the IRB at all!
If that is how New Zeeland Rugby likes to play, and wishes be regarded as the power-house of world rugby, so be it. We know the truth. They only got there thanks to cheating and velvet glove treatment from the authorities that rule the game.
We all know that if you compete against them, different rules apply, and quietly we will laugh in our sleeves at the poor little sissy-boys that cannot play according to the normal rules, and most receive “special” treatment. Every school play ground and every family has got one of these. If we don’t compensate the standard of the game for them, they go crying in mommy’s apron. Shame!
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