Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu: Rugby’s Joey Barton

So, Samoa and Gloucester centre and scatter-gun Tweeter, Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu, has finally turned up before a World Cup disciplinary committee.

The suspended Samoan faces charges related to his outburst on Twitter after the Samoa v South Africa match in which he accused Welsh referee Nigel Owens of being a "biased, racist prick". This followed his earlier assertions on Twitter that the treatment of Samoa at the World Cup was comparable to the holocaust.

Although arguably the words used Fuimaono-Sapolu have been somewhat inappropriate, they do at least draw attention to the points he is trying to make. The scheduling of matches to the detriment of 2nd and 3rd tier nations is clearly an issue that needs addressing at the next World Cup and, while no one would accept for one minute that Nigel Owens might be racist, it was clearly lunacy for the IRB to put a Welsh referee in charge of a crucial game the result of which would directly affect the Welsh team’s prospects.

As Fuimaono-Sapolu so eloquently puts it:  

"Whether it's a perceived bias or an actual bias … You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work it out but you do have to be an idiot not to."

Fuimaono-Sapolu's one-man campaign to get the IRB "to stop treating the tier-two teams like crap” will resume on 15th October, the date to which the disciplinary hearing has been adjourned. Book early to avoid disappointment.