Danny Care âdevastatedâ as he is ditched by England
Stuart Lancaster faces problems at half-back as Toby Flood is out for six weeks and joins the discarded Care on the missing list
The Guardian, Thursday 5 January 2012
Stuart Lancaster said he was not making a statement by throwing Danny Care out of the England squad after the scrumâhalf was arrested twice in three weeks for drinkârelated offences. In taking strong action against the player he was probably closest to in the national set-up, however, the interim head coach showed how the high-tolerance threshold given to misbehaving players in the World Cup had gone the way of the previous management.
Care, who missed the World Cup because of injury, will not feature in the Six Nations Championship this year after being arrested on New Yearâs Eve for drinkâdriving. His case will come to court on 16 January and he will be pleading guilty. The Harlequins scrumâhalf was last month arrested in Weybridge, Surrey, for being drunk and disorderly and was served with an ÂŁ80 fixed-penalty notice.
Englandâs caretaker coach will also have to find a way of coping without his first-choice fly-half Toby Flood, moreover, after it was revealed he could be out for up to six weeks with a knee injury and miss the Six Nations games against Scotland and Italy. âToby has had a bang on the knee and itâs being treated,â said Richard Cockerill, Leicesterâs director of rugby. âWeâll just have to see how it progresses.â
Lancaster has known Care since he was a schoolboy. Care came through the Leeds academy when Lancaster was at the club and said last month: âStuart basically got me through my A levels. He made sure I got my homework done as well as my rugby. Heâd take me out for extra rugby sessions and he was fantastic to me. I have an enormous amount of respect for him.â
Lancaster admitted the public reputation of the England team had sunk during the World Cup and that he intends to change that perception but he said Care, who missed the tournament because of a foot problem, had been thrown out of the squad not as a consequence of what happened in New Zealand but because of what he had done. Unlike Mike Tindall, who successfully appealed against a decision to eject him from the elite England squad for drunken behaviour during the World Cup, Care has accepted his punishment.
âI was disappointed when I heard the news about Danny,â said Lancaster, who told Care face to face about the decision to remove him from the squad. "I know Danny and his family well. There is no pleasure at all for me in this but what he did was unacceptable. It was a difficult decision but the correct one. Danny was arrested for drink-driving three weeks after another drink-related offence. I have not done this to make a statement: we have dealt with a player who was out of order.
âHarlequins will support Danny and so will we. He is hurting a lot and I know him well enough to appreciate he will never make this mistake again. He made a poor error of judgment and he will pay the consequences. I do not think he has a lifestyle problem: he will come back from this a better player and person and I think he can become the worldâs No1 scrumâhalf.â
Care, who said he was âdevastatedâ to be thrown out of the squad, is the second scrum-half to be unavailable to England for the start of the Six Nations after the knee injury to Richard Wigglesworth of Saracens.
âI will miss it hugely,â Care said. âIt is now up to me to get my head down, keep playing well and learn from my actions. I have decided not to contest the drinkâdriving charge as I want to bring this to a close quickly and not have it hanging over my head.â
Lancaster and his two coaches, Graham Rowntree and Andy Farrell, will remind players about the minimum standards of behaviour expected of them when the squad gather in Leeds this month to start preparing for the Six Nations but there will not be a ban on alcohol.
âWe have moved on from the World Cup and Dannyâs case has to be taken in its own context,â Rowntree said. "We cannot tolerate what he did but there is no systemic problem in the squad.
âWe will put guidelines together from day one: the lads will still be able to relax and have a meal out but there will be limits put on when they have to come back and stop drinking. We do not want it to be a concentration camp but the squad will be told about the expectations and responsibilities that come with being an England rugby player.â
Harlequins, meanwhile, have fined Care ÂŁ10,000 for the latest incident and he will be required to work on their inner-city coaching programme until the end of the 2012-13 pre-season. The Harlequins director of rugby, Conor OâShea, said: "Dannyâs actions are inexcusable and we are all deeply disappointed and feel very let down.
âDanny knows what he did is wrong and has accepted the responsibility for his actions. Danny is one of the nicest guys you could meet and bitterly regrets the damage this incident has done to both his and the clubâs reputation.â
