The rugby stops for love: momentarily

By Jon Geddes
August 22, 2007

THE Wallabies have resolved one of the most delicate issues ahead of the World Cup: how much contact players can have with their wives and girlfriends.

Team management has decided that partners will be allowed to spend three nights with players during the tournament.

After the first three pool matches against Japan, Wales and Fiji, the squad will return to their base in Montpellier. Those are the three evenings the wives and girlfriends can stay overnight.

After that, players will be twin-sharing rooms and there will be no further opportunities for couples to spend the night together. The wives and partners will not be staying in the same hotel as the Wallabies squad.

The issue of sporting teams and the contact with the partners has become a matter of great debate in recent times.

The Australians policy is certainly different from that being adopted by the All Blacks. Their management has ruled that the players' rooms will be off-limits to partners for the entire World Cup.

"We certainly don't make an effort to completely segregate them," All Blacks manager Darren Shand said. "Players are happy to have wives and partners there but they don't want any of the girls staying with the players on their floor."

The Australian and New Zealand cricket teams went a step further by banning partners at this year's World Cup in Jamaica.