All Black axed after travel breach
NEWS: Pau has cut ties with an All Black after the player breached the Top 14 club’s coronavirus-related rules about travel.
Pau said that on March 17 31-year-old All Black flyhalf Tom Taylor left France “without any prior authorisation from his employer – even though all players were asked to remain available to the club and to comply with government measures in the fight against COVID-19”.
“This personal decision, contrary to all instructions the club had issued since March 13, is all the more illegitimate that it was not justified,” the club said in a statement on Sunday.
Pau argued that at the time, there was no information on a likely resumption of the Top 14 so all players had to remain available, something the club said Taylor’s “teammates had understood and respected”.
The Top 14 has since been cancelled, the elite league and division two campaigns abandoned without a champion.
Despite that, Pau said Taylor’s actions “ran counter to club values, team spirit and basic ethics”.
“The club has no other recourse than to initiate a dismissal procedure.”
Taylor, capped three times by New Zealand in 2013, touched down in France in 2015, spending a season at Toulon before signing for Pau.
