Rugby Union: Lions' letter scolds Wood

WILL CARLING, the England captain, and six of his senior team- mates, joined forces yesterday to criticise Dudley Wood, secretary of the Rugby Football Union, for his alleged inflammatory comments about black sportsmen.

They have issued an open letter, disassociating themselves from remarks that Wood was reported to have made at a lunch with sports editors last week.

Carling, Rob Andrew, Brian Moore, Dewi Morris, Peter Winterbottom and Rory and Tony Underwood, all of whom recently returned from touring New Zealand with the Lions, say in their letter: 'We wish to specifically disassociate ourselves from comments made by Mr Wood.

'We do not believe that Mr Wood's views represent the vast majority of people involved in our game.'

The Daily Mirror claimed that Wood had told the sports editors that boxing and athletics were 'sports for the underprivileged, unemployed and ethnic communities.'

It said he had criticised Linford Christie and Carl Lewis for 'putting nothing back' into their sport, and that he had asked who would watch a Great Britain-Kenya athletics meeting in which every athlete was black. He has denied making the remarks.

The letter goes on: 'The administration of other sports is something we believe is best dealt with by experts in those fields. We would not wish participants in those sports to believe that players in rugby are critical of them.

'More importantly, we wish to state that we do not consider any of the sports mentioned by Mr Wood to be inferior to our own in any way. In fact, we are proud of all English sports achievements.

'Finally, we wish to make it clear that, in our experience, rugby is a game open to all classes, colours and sexes. These criteria are irrelevant as far as we are

concerned.'