First and foremost, it would be a terrible shame if the six-week suspension, with two weeks suspended, meted out to Bundee Aki on Wednesday night for verbally abusing match officials marked the end of his storied international career with Ireland. This would be no way to end it.
Of course, by the same token, the IRFU has to defend its referees and match officials as well as its players, and there’s a line that the latter cannot cross. The game needs characters, it’s true, but it needs referees even more. Aki allegedly crossed that line after last Saturday’s Connacht–Leinster URC game.
The URC stated that Aki was “alleged to have engaged with the match official team on several occasions in a manner which may be deemed to be in breach of the league’s Disciplinary Rules related to Misconduct”.
Yet even so, the union’s statement ahead of Aki’s Independent Disciplinary Committee hearing on Wednesday seemed extraordinarily pre-emptive.
“The 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. The IRFU are investigating the matter further internally and no additional comment will be made at this time.”
This reads like a guilty verdict before the hearing. Couldn’t this have waited until after the hearing verdict?
The suspension handed out by the disciplinary panel need not necessarily signal the end of Aki’s international career. It doesn’t even rule him out of the full Six Nations, but he will miss the first three games which would make it difficult for him to regain his place and achieve his dream of playing in the 2027 World Cup. But not impossible. He is centrally contracted to the IRFU until the end of the season, with an option for another year.
Aki’s Connacht and Ireland teammate Mack Hansen received a three-game suspension, reduced from six by attaching “a learning process”, for his critique of the match officials at a post-game press conference after last season’s Leinster-Connacht game in the Aviva. Aki was handed a three-match suspension for remarks made to referee Ian Davies during Connacht’s Pro12 defeat to Leinster in 2017.
There has long been a widespread belief among supporters, players, coaches et al in Connacht that they receive an unfair crack of the whip from officialdom, especially in interpros and from Irish referees.
Bundee Aki takes a selfie with his daughter Adrianna and family members after making his Ireland debut against South Africa at the Aviva Stadium in 2017. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
They are perhaps a little paranoid and they are perhaps a little entitled to be, although it’s a little ironic that players from the southern hemisphere have been so outspoken in expressing this perceived bias against the province. However, whether true or not, henceforth this is now even more of an issue.
In both of these games against Leinster, there has been a belief within Connacht that the officials have been comparatively lenient on high hits by players in blue.
Perhaps the huge sense of occasion last Saturday may have been another factor. Aki was one of those who had been waiting 10 years for the new Clan Stand and amenities to materialise. He would have been desperate to play and was named on the bench and maybe was raging against the dying of the light.
At the end of his initial 11-minute stint as a temporary replacement for Cathal Forde at the end of the first quarter, Aki first seems to engage verbally with referee Eoghan Cross after carrying into contact and being caught in the face by an upright Charlie Tector.
Should Irish players have been wrapped in cotton wool ahead of the Six Nations?
It’s not an offensive hit, per se, but it probably should have been raised by the TMO Leo Colgan and led to a penalty and yellow card. Aki returned as a replacement for Harry West in the 49th minute and played the final 30 minutes of what must have been a particularly frustrating night for him.
None of which is vindication for whatever he may have allegedly said, just an attempt to put it into context.
Starting out on his international journey after his debut against South Africa in November 2017, no less than with James Lowe and Jamison Gibson-Park – though perhaps more so – there had been some outside noise critical of his selection.
He had played a key role in the province’s 2016 Pro 12 triumph and has remained loyal to Connacht for a decade. Aki is invariably the player who generates the most animated attention among younger fans and the one who stays on longest after training sessions or matches. A prime example was after the Connacht-Munster game in Castlebar last season.
Bundee Aki, bloodied and bruised, during Ireland’s Six Nations match against Wales in Cardiff last year. Photograph: Dan Sheridan/Inpho
Supporters also see the passion and fierce competitiveness which has helped bring silverware to every team he’s played for. This extended to Ireland when he was an ever-present in the 2018 Grand Slam.
There was no doubting the commitment of Aki – or Lowe or Gibson-Park – when Ireland recorded a first-ever home win over the All Blacks in November 2018, and again in 2021. Aki was also an integral part of the series win in New Zealand in 2022 (when also captaining the Ireland XV against the NZ Maori team in front of his family) as well as the 2023 Grand Slam clinched on home soil.
There were a couple of suspensions after incurring red cards in the 2019 World Cup and the 2021 Six Nations, though he atoned for the former with his stunning performances at the 2023 World Cup when equalling Keith Earls’s Irish record of five tries at a World Cup. He was on a four-man shortlist for Player of the Tournament and the team of the tournament.
It wouldn’t be stretching credibility to suggest that, along the way, Aki has become the most popular player in Ireland. His name invariably induces the loudest cheer for Irish players before games, whether abroad or at home – certainly since Peter O’Mahony retired.
This was true when the British & Irish Lions players were announced at the Aviva Stadium before their game against Argentina last year. You think also of the huge roar that greeted his appearance on the sidelines in Cardiff when he was preparing to be introduced off the bench in last season’s Six Nations, and his arrival helped transform the game.
In any event, you’d hope there’ll be a more fitting final flourish to his Irish international career.
“If you visit where I’m from, south Auckland, you don’t get much opportunity out there,” Aki recently told Conor Murray and Gavin Andrews on the Irish Rugby Social Podcast.
“There’s only a group of people that come out of there, so they all support me and they’re absolutely delighted – my family and friends and everybody, and I still keep in contact with them to this day.
“They’re always supportive. They’re just happy to see me go on this journey. Even if New Zealand play Ireland, they always back Ireland – all wearing their Irish gear.”
Andrews put it to Aki: “So, born in New Zealand, made in Ireland?”
Aki: “Born in New Zealand, made in Ireland. Yeah.”