Rugby: O'Connor's career hangs in the balance – 3 amigos getting comeuppance?

1:35 PM Friday Sep 20, 2013 (NZ Herald)

The immediate future of wayward Wallabies star James O'Connor hangs in the balance, with the test back being interviewed on Friday by the Australian Rugby Union integrity officer Phil Thomson.

The 44-test back is giving his side of a story that unfolded in Perth early last Sunday morning, when he was stopped from boarding an Air Asia flight to Bali because he was allegedly intoxicated.

O'Connor, who played against Argentina a few hours earlier, was subsequently named in the Wallabies squad for their final two Rugby Championship tests away to the Springboks and Argentina.

However his position in the squad, which gathers in Sydney on Saturday and leaves for Cape Town on Monday, would come under threat if any suspension was levied against him.

O'Connor has reportedly denied being drunk during the airport incident, but did admit to engaging in a heated argument over the seating arrangements for him and his girlfriend.

He was removed from the terminal by Australian Federal Police officers but ended up boarding a later flight to Bali.

A Wallabies spokesperson said on Friday that Thomson had already spoken to representatives of Air Asia and the Australian Federal Police.

He said it was unlikely any decision on O'Connor would be announced until late on Friday, or possibly on Saturday.

O'Connor is one of just three wingers named in the squad.

The incident and ensuing investigation comes at a delicate time for O'Connor.

The gifted back was believed to be on the verge of re-signing with the ARU and rejoining his original Super Rugby team Western Force after being cut loose by the Melbourne Rebels.

The latest incident adds to a list of black marks O'Connor incurred during the tenure of previous Wallabies coach Robbie Deans.

In 2010, he was allegedly involved in an altercation with teammates Quade Cooper and Kurtley Beale in Paris.

The following year he was suspended for one test after missing the Wallabies' World Cup squad announcement and photo following a night out.

In June this year, O'Connor and Beale were photographed at a fast-food outlet at 4am in the days leading up to the second Test against the British and Irish Lions.

- AAP

 

 

A real tragedy that a very good player has developed an ego that transcends his rugby talent. He has never grown up and is a real problem child. Mixing with some really bad apples does not help either. He has a girl friend? Really surprising - he is like Carter - both love Cape Town for very obvious reasons. James will miss a visit to Cape Town really badly.

This article from The Australian is really what the Australians think of their spoilt child:- "IN terms of pure ability, James O'Connor is one of the hottest players in world rugby yet, despite this, four Australian Super Rugby franchises flatly don't want him while the fifth is poised to break off negotiations with him. As he suns himself today on Kuta beach, perhaps not enjoying his Bali vacation quite as much as he might have hoped, O'Connor, 23, should ponder this: good as he is on the rugby field, no one wants him. And for that confronting situation, he has no one to blame but himself. The wobbly suspension bridge still open to the Western Force is the only bridge in Australian rugby that O'Connor hasn't burnt. But in the early hours of last Sunday, not long after he delivered the sublime final pass for the Wallabies' only try in their 14-13 win over Argentina, there he was playing with matches again - getting barred from a plane about to take him and his girlfriend off on a short holiday to Bali. And not just barred, but escorted from the terminal at Perth international airport by the Australian Federal Police. Precisely what he was doing taking an overseas vacation during a valuable rest period right in the thick of what has been a disastrous Rugby Championship campaign for the Wallabies is an intriguing question that will be addressed a little later in this column. But for now let's concentrate on O'Connor's behaviour. Best-case scenario: O'Connor was only arguing with airline officials over the fact they couldn't organise for him to sit beside his girlfriend and became a little too obnoxious. Middle-case scenario: he'd partied too hard after the Wallabies' win and was drunk. Worst-case scenario: he was both intoxicated and obnoxious. The Australian Rugby Union's integrity officer Phil Thomson has been charged with investigating O'Connor - again - but, in view of the player's long history of disrespecting the Wallabies jersey and everything it stands for, it scarcely matters which scenario he settles on. Even a best-case scenario is likely to result in the worst possible outcome for O'Connor if the Force, once bitten by him in 2011, weighs up risk and reward and shies away from offering him a new contract. Recall how O'Connor feared staying with the struggling Force two years ago could damage his "brand". So he knows about such things. The pity is he has a higher regard for his own brand than he does for the Wallabies brand. In the event the Force turns its back on him and so complete an astonishing Australia-wide contractual shutout, O'Connor would become ineligible to play for the Wallabies next season and beyond - indeed, until he again is contracted to an Australian Super Rugby team. Technically speaking, he remains eligible to play out the remainder of this year for the Wallabies because Australian rugby contracts span the full calendar year. But any sort of adverse finding against him almost certainly would rule him out of the tour to South Africa and Argentina starting on Monday and thereafter it would make little sense for him to be selected for the five-Test tour to Britain and Europe in November-December. The team is rebuilding under coach Ewen McKenzie, and Australian rugby can't afford to waste limited and precious resources on a player who (a) can't be selected next year anyway and (b) has no appreciation of what an honour it is to wear his country's colours. O'Connor's apologists are claiming this latest incident is all a media beat-up, that what he does in his own time is his own business. And perhaps if this was an isolated indiscretion there might be some merit in giving him the benefit of the doubt. But it's not, and even if his official ARU rap sheet remains relatively clean because no one during the six years Robbie Deans was Wallabies coach was prepared to seriously discipline him, the fact is that O'Connor has lost the senior Wallabies players. In fact, he lost them a long while ago. They brooded in ever-deepening frustration during the final days of Deans, waiting in vain for the coach to pull him into line and they have made it amply clear to McKenzie that it will be impossible to build a strong team culture if this is allowed to continue. Not that McKenzie needs to be told. When he was handed the Wallabies coaching job in July it came with a mandate to clean up the team culture. He won't fail this first critical test. Arguably, dumping O'Connor is going to hurt the underperforming Wallabies in the short-term. With Nick Cummins joining the casualty list last weekend in Perth, McKenzie could be forced to go with the three-Test rookie Joe Tomane and the uncapped Chris Feauai-Sautia as his wingers against the Springboks in Cape Town tomorrow week unless he is prepared to move Adam Ashley-Cooper or Israel Folau or both to accommodate Tevita Kuridrani in the centres. Long-term, though, there is only upside for the Wallabies in taking a stand in terms of culture and morale. As for the Bali holiday, one can scarcely imagine the AFL allowing its players to pop offshore for a brief, unsupervised holiday in the midst of the finals series. For all the bleating that the Wallabies should have been training hard this week to lift their game ahead of the Cape Town and Rosario Tests, it has been an arduous season, especially for those players involved in the British and Irish Lions series. They need this opportunity to freshen up. Still, what does it do to the Rugby Union Players' Association's valid argument that there is too much travel involved in top-line rugby when players voluntarily choose the international terminal over the domestic one? It may well be that O'Connor will be seeing a lot of international terminals over the next year or two, but not as a highly paid, heavily promoted Wallaby. If all of Australian rugby decides he is simply too much trouble to deal with, his work options become switching to the NRL or heading off to Europe, Britain or Japan. Perhaps time abroad out of the spotlight would do him good. The only world O'Connor has known since he left school is professional rugby. But even that limited world does not revolve around him."