A council member for England\u2019s Rugby Football Union has resigned after making discriminatory comments on social media about Maggie Alphonsi, a Women\u2019s World Cup-winning former England star.<\/p>\n
In a post on Facebook, Matt Smith questioned what Alphonsi knows \u201cabout men\u2019s rugby\u201d while she was working as a TV pundit for the men\u2019s Six Nations game between France and England in March.<\/p>\n
Smith, who represents Warwickshire RFU, was handed a seven-month ban by an independent disciplinary panel, a sanction that meant his RFU council privileges \u2014 including match tickets and travel expenses \u2014 were removed as well as access to RFU premises.<\/p>\n
He still held his voting rights and stayed on as a council member in the 62-person governing body, however, and Alphonsi called for him to be replaced, saying there was \u201cno room for sexism, misogyny, or any form of discrimination in our game\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Warwickshire RFU said in a statement that Smith has quit \u201cin light of a recent disciplinary process\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognise that this situation has raised important concerns and as a constituent body, we want to be clear that we take issues of sexism and misogyny seriously,\u201d it said. \u201cCreating a respectful, inclusive environment across our game remains a priority for us all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alphonsi is ‘First Lady’ of English rugby<\/p>\n
Alphonsi won 74 caps, seven Six Nations titles, and the World Cup with England in 2014 before retiring that year.<\/p>\n
She was honoured by the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 for services to rugby and inducted into World Rugby\u2019s Hall of Fame in 2016 \u2014 with the world body describing her as the \u201cFirst Lady\u201d of English women\u2019s rugby.<\/p>\n
Alphonsi first commentated on men\u2019s international rugby when she was signed up by broadcaster ITV for the Rugby World Cup in 2015.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including Trump threatens retaliation after a helicopter\u2019s shot down, and a man flees from Police into an alligator infested swamp. (Source: Breakfast)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A council member for England\u2019s Rugby Football Union has resigned after making discriminatory comments on social media about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213,1745],"class_list":["post-469327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}