the Telegraph<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI was warming up on the floor and there were racial slurs said to me from the crowd while I was warming up.<\/p>\n
“I just ignored it, I was trying to warm up. It was in English. I just ignored it, didn\u2019t tell anyone, and cracked on. I was locked into the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, we started warming up again after about 20 minutes of the match, and there were more racial slurs (from behind the posts).<\/p>\n
“But, this time, the other boys heard it. I asked Bevan (Rodd) \u2018have you heard this?\u2019 and he said that he had and then he shouted at them.<\/p>\n
“He said something to them. We were walking back in and then someone told Kev Sinfield. I\u2019m not sure anything else was said after that. It was pretty s—, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
England’s seven replacements for the match were Curtis Langdon, Beven Rodd, Asher Opoku-Fordjour, Chandler Cunningham-South, Guy Pepper, Alex Dombrandt, Jack van Poortvliet and Cadan Murley – with Opoku-Fordjour saying they all know what they heard from the crowd.<\/p>\n
The Sale prop, who was called into train with the British and Irish Lions, added that he never considered not playing in the match despite the racist slurs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would never do that,\u201d he added. \u201cI was just trying to stay locked into the game.<\/p>\n
“We were on tour. We had a game to win. That was top of my priorities. I just tried to ignore it and carry on.<\/p>\n
“I didn\u2019t even look at them. I was just trying to stay in the game. The game was my main focus. In 2025, that stuff should not be happening.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Rugby confirmed this summer that there had been racial slurs shouted at England players but the perpetrators…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[18194,4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-399683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-england-rugby-union-team","9":"tag-rugby","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115151119720876123","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0_GettyImages-2223742931.jpg\")
Asher Opoku-Fordjour with Chandler Cunningham-South during England’s tour of Argentina this summer(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n