All Blacks meeting may have been recorded

New Zealand Rugby has asked Australian police to investigate a possible security breach after a listening device was discovered in the team meeting room of their Sydney hotel.

The New Zealand Herald newspaper said the device had been described as “sophisticated” and significant effort had been made to hide it within the chair’s cushion. Hiding it “was a highly skilled and meticulous act” and the person who put it there would have needed “a significant amount of time”, the paper said it had been told.

A listening device planted in the All Blacks’ Sydney hotel may have recorded a team meeting, New Zealand Rugby Union says.

“It’s shocked everyone. We understand a few mixed emotions and it’s not great for the game but it’s happened and it’s out of our hands now and we’ll move forward”. With the hotel and the NSW police investigating, the expectation is that World Rugby too launches an investigation, as this might be a serious black mark on the record of the global game. Instead, police only found out about the incident when journalists began calling them on Saturday morning. Asked whether the six-day delay made the investigation harder, Superintendent Brad Hodder said “any delay in any investigation’s always tough, but we’ll look at that information”. Saturday’s game is the first of three matches in the annual Bledisloe Cup between the two southern hemisphere sides.

The ARU denies being involved, but New Zealand Rugby is not convinced. It is completely ludicrous.