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Sale Sharks statement: ‘Disgusting abuse directed at Tom Curry’
By Liam Heagney
Sake Sharks have issued a statement in support of Tom Curry after the England back-rower and his family were subjected to “disgusting abuse” after he reported being on the receiving end of alleged discriminatory language during last Saturday night’s Rugby World Cup semi-final versus South Africa.
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It emerged in the aftermath of England’s dramatic 16-15 loss to South Africa at Stade de France that Curry had approached referee Ben O’Keeffe midway through the opening half and asked the official. “Sir, if their hooker calls me a white c***, what do I do?” O’Keeffe replied: “Nothing, please. I’ll be on it.”
Curry opted to stay silent in the post-game mixed zone when asked about what had happened, but it emerged on Monday that World Rugby were formally reviewing the allegation in relation to the use of discriminatory language by South African hooker Bongi Mbonambi.
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That situation ignited a heap of negative social media commentary about Curry and his Gallagher Premiership club decided to act on Wednesday, calling out the abuse and issuing its full support for their player.
“Sale Sharks’ owners, players, coaches and staff are absolutely appalled by the nature and level of disgusting abuse directed at Tom Curry and his family in relation to an incident in the England vs South Africa World Cup semi-final,” read the statement.
“Everyone at the club stands fully and proudly behind Tom and we look forward to welcoming him back to Carrington.”
The white Afrikaner community, otherwise known as the ‘white c*nts’ is 100% behind Bongi.
As a matter of fact, the ‘white c*nts’ take great offense to being associated with Curry, who would be better described as a ‘P*es’ by Bongi.
The ‘white c*nts’ will be cheering for Bongi in the final.
That’s right Curry. The final.
Where there’s smoke there’s usually fire. I’m just not sure why WR is letting this drag on. Just ban/don’t ban the guy so we can move on to focussing on the final.
Think this reaction to abuse is over exaggerated. Most of the abuse is generated from anonymous online posters, who should be ignored. Online abuse of sporting stars has been pandemic for many years now! How did we survive before internet?
Abuse is unacceptable, of course.
Does anyone know, has Curry confirmed the moment in the game at which this was supposed to have happened? If not then the absence of that information should be a flashing red light for the thoughtful observer.
Note to the World Rugby PR team:
Transparency earns trust. The longer you delay informing the public of the moment in the game in which the incident was alleged to have taken place, the more people will assume that it didn’t. And the less people will trust your ultimate assessment of what happened.
Also, by the way, you can’t find a way for everyone to look good out of this. The three choices are that we conclude Curry is 1/ a victim, 2/ a fool or 3/ a troublemaker.
Cry me a river 😂
No player deserves abuse. But there seems to be no sympathy for Bongi Mbonambi who has now been called a racist which is gunpowder in a deeply racialised country like SA. If it is true that Curry referenced an altercation in December 2022, and that nothing actually happened last week, then there must be legal repercussions. A premeditated accusation against Bongi could only have been designed to “provoke” him into doing something worthy of a yellow card. I really hope that wasn’t the plan because that would be extremely problematic.