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Rugby player banned for life for on-field attack on referee

The player has been banned for life.

A South Otago rugby player has been banned from playing the sport in New Zealand after punching a referee.

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The 28-year-old Vaea Uelese was playing for Crescent’s senior team on July 27 when he was sent off by referee Brandon Hale.

According to New Zealand media reports, the Crescent player didn’t agree with the call and took out his anger on Hale by throwing a punch.

The incident was captured in a grainy video from the sideline.

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The New Zealand Herald reported that the violent act took place towards the end of a club game against Strath Taieri in Middlemarch.

Shortly after the game, the Crescent player was charged with assault by police.

But Uelese walked away from the criminal justice system without any assault charge.

The Otago Rugby Football Union confirmed yesterday Uelese would not play rugby in New Zealand again.

However, the Dunedin District Court confirmed that Uelese will be allowed to be involved in administration, officiating or coaching after the end of next season, partly due to a reconciliation process he had with referee Hale.

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Source: New Zealand Herald

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J
JW 36 minutes ago
'They smelt it': Scott Robertson says Italy sensed All Blacks' vulnerability

Even the 20/30 cappers did too I reckon.


IDK, I think Jordan has a limited life span in this side unless he can develop more to his game. Like you go on to mention, I think theyres more important things to worry about than the effectiveness of someone's extra strings, or secondary components to their game.


Bash backs are Fosters thing, and to a large part they've made it work. Theyre now one of the best teams in the world.


They boy's trucked it up a bit against Italy in the redzone, and against France, wasn't that effective without the right players probably.


Try and take a look at it this way. Dissapointed Havili and Blackadder were in the side? Havili despite clearly shown that he can't do what the team needs at 12 was kept on for the RWC. Back goes down and he brings in Blackadder who doesn't play. Refuses to drop Christie when he should and look who starts this season. Beauden Barret not playing well enough to keep his 10 jersey but we gotta keep him in the side. Weve only got one 8, we stuff developing another I'll just play Ardie every game.


This years team wasn't burdened overly with injuries but they were in every position Razor might have wanted to try and development, severely limiting options. I'm not defending Razor as there was also plenty of other opportunity to make up for it and he was a little gunshy, but I'm also not going to overly criticise him because he chose cohesion over a black slate.

How long are we going to keep blaming All Black failings on Ian Foster.

I think more and more people are on board with it being time to try alternatives, but then again, how would they have reacted to a loss against Italy? 😉

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