Wallabies read riot act
Greg Growden Chief Rugby Correspondent
Friday, June 8, 2007

An advance party of Wallabies travelling to Cape Town tonight have been warned to be on their best behaviour in the wake of previous controversies involving Australian rugby tourists in the same city, including one player being sent home.

Although Australia play Fiji at Subiaco Oval tomorrow night, six players will miss the match and travel to Cape Town to prepare for the following weekend's Tri Nations opener against South Africa at Newlands.

Rocky Elsom, Mark Gerrard, Matt Giteau, Wycliff Palu, Nathan Sharpe and Guy Shepherdson will be accompanied by three team officials - manager Phil Thomson, *skills coach Alex Evans and trainer Jason Weber.

The rest of the Wallabies travel to South Africa on Sunday night.

The Wallabies were recently warned by team management that they will not accept any form of bad behaviour on tour - especially in a city where players had been involved in numerous unsavoury incidents. As one Wallabies team management member said last night: "They know the circumstances if they step out of line."

Apart from the infamous Cape Town taxi affair involving the ACT Brumbies*, the Wallabies last trip to this city in 2005 was a nightmare, capped off by Matt Henjak becoming the first Wallaby sent home from a tour in 39 years following a nightclub incident in which he threw the contents of a glass at other patrons.

Lote Tuqiri and Wendell Sailor were each fined $500 and received two-match bans, suspended for two years, for staying out too late at a nightclub, while Matt Dunning, who also went out but returned to the team hotel earlier, was fined $500.

On the same tour, the Wallabies were ridiculed in the local media when it was revealed that they had been involved in a team game at a Cape Town restaurant, where some players admitted to having a morbid fascination in eating each other.

Two days later the Wallabies lost the Nelson Mandela Challenge Plate with an appalling performance against the Springboks in Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, good behaviour of a different kind has been demanded in Perth, with the coaching staff planning to remind their new Test second-rower James Horwill not to get carried away with his emotions in his debut international.

Horwill is a traditional second-rower who loves standing his ground and being assertive. As Wallabies coach John Connolly explained: "James is a good player, and a real tough bugger." Yet Horwill's aggression has regularly seen him spend plenty of time cooling off in the sin bin.

"That's the way I like to play football," Horwill said yesterday. "There's no point changing that, and I think it would be smart to stick to what I do best. It's got me in trouble here and there, with some yellow cards and stern 'talking-to's from the referee. But I am attempting to control my aggression."