{"id":273141,"date":"2026-01-31T04:45:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/273141\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T04:45:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:45:14","slug":"i-was-never-in-hiding-ex-leinster-rugby-star-found-in-rural-australia-despite-warrant-for-his-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/273141\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I was never in hiding\u2019 &#8211; Ex-Leinster rugby star found in rural Australia despite warrant for his arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Rocky Elsom (43) was sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty in a French court <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Australian reporters tracked former Leinster rugby star Rocky Elsom (left) down to the small town of Cooroy in Queensland where he has been living openly. Photo: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Rocky Elsom.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Australian reporters tracked former Leinster rugby star Rocky Elsom (left) down to the small town of Cooroy in Queensland where he has been living openly. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">On-the-run ex-Leinster rugby star Rocky Elsom has been tracked down to a small town in rural Australia where he is living quietly \u2013 despite being a wanted man in France.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The former Australian captain, who has a European Arrest Warrant issued in his name, had not previously been seen in public since garda\u00ed called to his home in Dublin looking to arrest him in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rocky Elsom (43) was sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty in a French court&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,898,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-273141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-latest-news-ticker","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}