Dagg: We dodged a bullet
All Blacks fullback Israel Dagg expressed his sympathy for disgraced England centre Mike Tindall and believes he could have been the one taking all the flak had New Zealand not won the World Cup.
Dagg and teammate Cory Jane embarked on a late-night boozing session just 72 hours before the All Blacks were due to face Argentina in the World Cup quarterfinals.
Dagg was injured and not involved in the Last Eight clash against the Pumas, but Jane had already been named in the starting XV and was retained in the run-on side – mainly due to various other injuries in the NZ RWC squad.
Luckily for the pair, New Zealand defeated Argentina and went on to win the Webb Ellis Cup, with Jane playing out of his skin in the quarterfinals to take the heat off him. Dagg followed up with excellent showings in both the semifinal – as he set up a try for Ma’a Nonu against the Wallabies – and the final – against France – to make amends for his part in the drinking scandal.
However, the 23-year-old is all too aware of how differently things could have gone following the boozing session.
“We had plenty of criticism, too, but it’s good teams that deal with those things and win World Cups,” Dagg told the London Evening Standard.
“I’m sure if we’d lost one of our tight games we would have been slaughtered just as much [as Tindall].
“It was a silly, silly thing that Cory and I did that night. We had been locked up in a hotel and we wanted to get out for a bit and went a bit too hard. But we came together as a team and we felt we redeemed ourselves.
“You are always doing interviews and press conferences during the World Cup. Then the media try get to your family because you aren’t talking, and that is tough.”
However, Tindall – who is married to the Queen’s grand-daughter – and the English side were not so lucky following the now infamous night out in Queenstown with dwarf-tossing and a mysterious blonde woman making for all the off-field headlines in New Zealand.
Dagg expressed his sympathy for Tindall and the English players, who were not able to shake off the problems off the pitch by producing the goods in their World Cup matches.
“I feel sorry for England because the whole Tindall thing was rumbling through the tournament. It’s a media thing, they like to blow things up,” he said.
“England are going through some tough times now but I’m sure they’ll get through it. They are a great nation and play some great footy.”
