Taking every step necessary to prevent another humiliating collapse, All-Black players have been banned from using Twitter during the forthcoming Rugby World Cup.
Every four years, it has become compulsory to declare the All-Blacks as shoo-ins for the World Cup title, yet the most famous team in world rugby have won the competition only once in six attempts, on home soil in 1987.
Graham Henry’s side have never been under as much pressure to triumph as they are this year, however, and the All-Black coach is determined that there will be no controversies caused by the use of social media, such as the one that got the likes of Jamie Heaslip and Cian Healy into trouble during the Six Nations earlier this year.
“We haven’t had a policy up till now, we’ve just asked them to make good decisions about that,” head coach Graham Henry said.
“In the All Blacks’ camp, most of the time, they’ve made good decisions – but at Rugby World Cup time – zilch.”
All Blacks manager Darren Shand added to Henry’s sentiments, saying that the players had also been advised against using Facebook and writing blogs and newspaper columns for the duration of the tournament.
“We don’t want players doing it [tweeting] individually, it just creates distraction,” Shand told the Dominion Post. “We want to be totally focused on the job at hand.”
Instead of keeping in touch with the players themselves, All-Black fans will be updated via what will probably be a bland, self-serving and controversy-free All Blacks twitter feed, with Shand adding: “We won’t be shutting ourselves away from the world.”
Plenty of the current New Zealand team already have Twitter accounts; utility back Cory Jane, for example has over 14,000 followers.
Like some of the Irish rugby stars, Jane also landed himself in hot water for tweeting out of turn, after he and prop Neemia Tialata revealed in 2009 that they had been dropped for a game against England a day before the team was announced.
Technology dinosaur Henry commented at the time: “I had to find out what bloody Twitter was. I thought it was a new guy playing five-eighth for England.”
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