Edinburgh captain Magnus Bradbury has been told to stay away from the club while an on-going investigation into the circumstances surrounding the head injury he suffered during a night out continues.
The 22-year-old missed last Saturday’s visit to London Irish as a result of the incident which took place the previous weekend, leading to his head coach Richard Cockerill claiming he had a shoulder injury in a bid to keep the matter under wraps.
However for all that Cockerill yesterday claimed to be treating Bradbury, whom he surprisingly appointed as captain just two months ago, should be treated as innocent until proven guilty, he admitted to discomfort at effectively having felt the need to lie on his behalf, while confirming that the player had apologised for his drop in standards.
“For me, that’s personal and private, but I have to sit here and discuss it and defend my position because of an incident that’s nothing to do with me,” said Cockerill.
“He’s pretty contrite around the situation because he’s let himself and his team down because he’s not fit to play. That’s just unfortunate for him, but young people sometimes make poor decisions. I’d rather players not be out in the middle of the night in positions where things happen, but I’m sure we’re all sensible enough to understand that we were all young once and we all go out and sometimes things happen.
“Now I need to find out exactly what that is and it may be completely innocent, it may not be. I just need to get to the crux of that. It’s very important that we get that process right and it’s important that we deal with it correctly.”
He reckoned that the matter will drag on at least until next week, claiming that for all the seriousness of the matter - which invites comparison with the way Celtic captain Scott Brown seemed to undermine the lifestyle values championed by his then manager Ronny Deila when photographed sitting in a street eating pizza a few days before the 2015 League Cup final - is low on his list of priorities.
“We’re off to Russia on Thursday, so it’s a short training week for us,” Cockerill pointed out. I need to make sure that we’re ready to play rugby. At this moment Magnus isn’t available to play, so he’s down the pecking order of importance.
“Next week when I have a bit more time, we’ll make sure that all those processes are done correctly and I’ll have that discussion with the player.”
In the meantime he confirmed that he has told Bradbury to keep his distance.
“I think that’s a sensible course,” he said.
“I want to make sure our standards are good. I’m not going to accept that behaviour if that’s gone on and nobody’s more important than the team. We played at the weekend, we played well and there are other players coming into the team who played well. That’s just normal, so nobody is more important than anybody else.
“He’s not here at the moment because he’s getting his head right from a physical point of view. I just want to set my stall out that I expect a level of behaviour from the players and I just want to make sure that until I find out exactly what’s gone on he’s not any use to us at the moment and also I want to make sure the players understand as a group that whatever’s happened a player’s gone out in town, he’s hurt himself however that is and I need to find out exactly how it’s happened. But it’s not an image I wish to portray to the general public or as a professional player. He’s an international rugby player who’s captain of his city rugby club so I think we all appreciate that.”
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