{"id":396475,"date":"2026-01-29T07:37:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T07:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/396475\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T07:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T07:37:16","slug":"ireland-issue-statement-in-response-to-bundee-aki-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/396475\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland issue statement in response to Bundee Aki allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Irish Rugby Football Union have confirmed that they are conducting an internal investigation following allegations that centre Bundee Aki<\/a> \u201cengaged with the match official team on several occasions\u201d after Connacht\u2019s loss to Leinster<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old was dropped from the Ireland<\/a> squad for \u201cdisciplinary reasons\u201d this week and replaced by Ulster\u2019s uncapped centre Jude Postlethwaite<\/a> for their training camp in Portugal<\/a> ahead of the Guinness Six Nations.<\/p>\n

The 68-cap Ireland international will instead appear before an independent disciplinary committee in relation to the incident.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Ireland issued a statement on Wednesday, a day after they arrived in the Algarve, saying they will investigate the matter internally.<\/p>\n

The statement reads: \u201cThe IRFU can confirm that Bundee Aki has not travelled with the men\u2019s senior squad to Portugal for disciplinary reasons.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

France <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ireland <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThe IRFU does not tolerate any form of disrespect shown towards match officials and does not condone actions that fall below the standards expected of players representing Irish rugby.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe IRFU are investigating the matter further internally and no additional comment will be made at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking before Aki\u2019s hearing was confirmed, former Ireland hooker Bernard Jackman said on the RT\u00c9 Rugby\u00a0podcast<\/a> that referees appear to be reacting to the way they are talked to by Irish players, which he said \u201cwill be really worrying for [Andy] Farrell.\u201d<\/p>\n

This came after Aki was penalised by referee Eoghan Cross for repeatedly confronting him during the match at the Dexcom Stadium.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven the one at the weekend for Connacht, Eoghan Cross, the referee, he warned Jack Carty<\/a> and Bundee and you could hear from his tone and you could see from his body language that he was on the edge of saying \u2018enough\u2019s enough,\u2019 he\u2019s warned them,\u201d Jackman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of plays later, he has to penalise Bundee for questioning his decision, when in actual fact the decision that Bundee was questioning was the right decision from the referee, Bundee was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Irish Rugby Football Union have confirmed that they are conducting an internal investigation following allegations that centre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-396475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}