Australian Olympians who played in the Rugby Seven’s and soccer teams drunkenly vomited over several seats and left a lavatory unusable during a nine-hour flight from Tokyo Haneda airport to Sydney on their return from the Tokyo Olympics it has been alleged.
Some players from the rugby team have been ordered to take alcohol abuse counselling sessions after they failed to show remorse and anonymously defended their behaviour on the Japan Airlines flight. Cabin crew were said to be “angered” by how they were treated.
Last week, Rugby Australia said it was investigating reports of raucous behaviour amongst its team on the flight home. Australian Olympic Committee chief executive Matt Carroll described the behaviour as “unacceptable” and “disappointing”.
But one player from the Rugby Sevens team anonymously told Australian media: “Who cares who f***ing threw up? it’s not World War III.” While another said: “People are allowed to be sick, that’s what sick bags are for…If someone was sick, it would not be the first time, who cares?”
After the drunken antics which included loud chanting and singing allegedly got out of hand, flight attendants took the decision to cut off alcohol only to be bombarded by passengers who, it is claimed, raided the galley to take alcohol from the onboard bars themselves.
Japan Airlines was so upset by the behaviour of some of the passengers onboard the flight that it made an official complaint to the Australian Olympic Committee.
Some players will be required to undergo alcohol abuse counselling but one member of the team claims it wasn’t the rugby or football players who were responsible for the mess. Onboard the flight were 49 athletes from nine sports.
“Well, if you look at where the vomit was, it wasn’t near our seating plan,” one source told an Australian newspaper. “We were rubbish on the field, but we can hold our alcohol,” another claimed.
The Australian Olympic delegation was also forced to apologise for the drunken antics of some of their athletes in the Olympic village after holes were punched in the walls of several bedrooms and cleaners were left with vomit to clean up.
Japan Airlines has slapped new conditions on all Australian Olympic athletes travelling on its flights, while Air New Zealand has also been forced to rebuke Kiwi athletes for unacceptable behaviour on some of their return flights from Tokyo.
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