Andy Brown
Andy Brown is a community rugby referee, coach and administrator in junior/youth rugby, and does this as well as plying his (extremely) limited playing talents for a local club 4th XV.
He writes rugby columns for Leeds Guide magazine and the website TykesRugby.co.uk, and is a season ticket holder at Leeds Carnegie.
In his blog for Setanta, he will be looking at the international game and top-flight domestic leagues from the perspective of one who is involved in the game at grassroots level.
What goes on tour, stays on tour
Back in January when the Matt Stevens affair became public, I wrote about the apparent double standards that appeared to have been applied to him, as opposed to Mike Tindall's driving ban for driving under the influence of alcohol.
Well, the drugs issue has well and truly come back into the spotlight again, with the news that Bath players Andrew Higgins, Alex Crockett and England international Michael Lipman have resigned from the club, following the now well publicised ‘party at the Church’.
Justin Harrison's hasty departure has also been linked with this occasion, and it looks like the folk running Bath Rugby Club have some serious employment law issues on their hands. Speculation is rife that the gang of three, as I shall call them henceforth, have jumped before they were pushed and are about to launch a bitter legal attack to clear their apparently sullied names.
Blogs such as this one and more esteemed columnists such as Brian Moore and Neil Back have responded to the current furore with what seem to be well reasoned, man-in-the-street reactions, which basically amount to "if they've nothing to hide, why refuse a test?".
As Moore also asserts in his column for the Telegraph, though, rugby as a sport does not usually attract the lurid headlines that football gets for the misdemeanours of its participants but, when there is a story to be had, it doesn't deserve special treatment either.