New Zealand Rugby CEO Steve Tew. Photo / Getty
New Zealand Rugby boss Steve Tew has admitted the listening device found in the All Blacks team room at their Sydney hotel before the first Bledisloe Cup test should have been handed to police earlier.
Instead of handing it to the New South Wales authorities immediately, the bug was given
to the hotel and only handed over to police five days after it was found, on the day of the test at ANZ Stadium on August 20, and after Tew spoke about the matter to his Australian counterpart Bill Pulver.
Tew, in his post-board meeting media briefing this morning, admitted lessons had been learned. An important integrity protocol of World Rugby's is that any suspicious behaviour or activity be reported to the game's governing body immediately, and in most cases the police.
"It did take five days," Tew said. "We handed it immediately to the hotel, who initiated their own investigation because we were on their premises. There will be some things for us to learn from this process and probably the delay in giving it to the police is something we will reflect on and say we could have done better.
"There was nothing sinister about it, we simply relied on the hotel to get on and find out what was going on."
