Leicester Tigers manager Richard Cockerill has banned his players from using Twitter after Jordan Crane revealed he had a serious injury via his Twitter account.
English international forward Crane suffered a recurrence of an ankle injury in the pre-season defeat of Munster last weekend and posted a message on his Twitter account that read: “Ankle again. Bad times. It’s a dark day and it will be three long months.”
The official line from the Tigers was that Crane had twisted his ankle and had seen a specialist, but had yet to receive the results of a scan which would determine the extent of his injury.
Tigers boss Cockerill was furious at Crane for making the injury known to the public and has vowed to clamp down on the social networking habits of his playing staff.
“Jordan is banned from tweeting or whatever you call it. The next time he does it I’ll break both his ankles!†Cockerill said.
“I assure you none of our players will be tweeting or Facebooking anything about Leicester Rugby Club ever again.”
Leicester captain and Irish international Geordan Murphy attempted to defuse the row and explain things from the point of view of both player and management.
“When you get an injury as a player you’re always a hypochondriac. Aagh, the season’s over’, that sort of thing,†he said.
“But until you’ve had three or four different scans and spoken to the specialist it is not fair to comment on anything. Potentially it could be two weeks, potentially you could be finished. Nobody knows.”
“Richard is a very passionate guy,” said Murphy. “He cares about Leicester, he cares about the players and he cares about the club being successful.
“With that you’re always going to have some explosions. I think that’s great. It’s good for the players to see that and hear the truth that comes out some times.”
