Lost all perspective

The French rugby team have been in New Zealand playing a couple of test matches against our All Blacks.

After the first test a couple of weeks back French layer Mathieu Bastareaud, was reportedly set upon by half a dozen Maori or pacific island youths who beat the crap out of him as he was returning to his hotel in Wellington after celebrating their victory over the All Blacks. He was sent home to France as his fractured cheek and eye socket meant he couldn’t play in the second test. 

New Zealand was shocked. Though we’re far from crime free here, the idea that a high profile visitor could be targeted like that was horrible.  We were embarrassed. The story was splashed al over the front pages. How could this happen here?

Anyway…

The cops investigated and video footage taken from outside the hotel showed Bastareaud arriving home unharmed. They talked with him further and a few days later Bastareaud subsequently ‘fessed up and conceded he’d made the story up as a better alternative to admitting he’d fallen in his hotel room and hit his head on a side table. He didn’t want to embarrass his family by admitting he’d been drunk.

OK. Scum. Fine. We talked some trash about him and prepared to move on.

A couple of days later it emerged in  a French newspaper that it was in fact a couple of his team mates who’d given him the bash when he was p*ssed and acting aggressively after they’d arrived back at the hotel.

OK. What a dickhead. Life’s way too short for this rubbish.

This morning I read that Mathieu Bastareaud attempted suicide in France yesterday and has now been admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he will remain under observation for at least two weeks due to his fragile emotional state.

And now we feel like scum for talking trash about him. Sigh.