Got to admit – it was pretty funny

A golf buggy yesterday. Not necessarily the one Powell took...

ANOTHER day of sackcloth and ashes for ‘shamed’ rugby star Andy Powell, as he fronted up to the episode the Welsh press has imaginatively entitled “Buggygate”.

For those you you that haven’t been anywhere near a paper or TV screen this side of Offa’s Dyke for the past fortnight, this is what the international number eight has admitted to:

After considerable carousing at the Wales team camp at the Vale of Glamorgan resort at Hensol, outside Cardiff, following the side’s dramatic last gasp victory over Scotland, Powell found himself awake and hungry at 5am.

Spurred by a logic that appears to have since deserted him, the Cardiff Blues star helped himself to one of the many golf buggies found around the golfing venue and set off in search of a sandwich and a chocolate bar, one stop and two-and-a-half miles away down the M4. He was at the service station – complete with cone and flashing light, “which was even more stupid” – when the law arrived.

A day in the cells ended with a “walk of shame” (though presumably not the walk of shame some of us have taken…) through the hotel to a waiting and, we presume, fuming Warren Gatland, who fired him from the squad on the spot. Now he fears for his international future, and will have to appear before Cardiff Magistrates next week.

Much tut-tutting from the commentariat ensued. Powell himself admitted: “I had a few too many beers and enjoyed the night a bit too much”, and so the evils of drink driving were patiently explained for the hard of thinking among us, along with a somewhat involved assessment of the performance limits of a golf buggy as compared to the speed of travel traditionally experienced on a motorway.

Yes, thanks for that. Of course, we are repeatedly told that we live in an age of health and safety, and what a bad thing that is. But, clearly, risk aversion has left a deep mark upon us all. Sure, it was a pretty daft thing that Powell did, as he admits himself, but nobody was hurt. Even the rozzers saw the funny side: “The police said when they questioned me ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to book you for speeding’.” So why keep giving him a hard time?

The idea of this big lump intently trying to get to the nearest food outlet in something hopelessly inadequate took me back to the kind of cartoon I laughed at when I was a kid, like Wacky Races or something similar. And it seems I’m not alone. Powell’s had over 120,000 letters of support.

Let me add to that and say I hope this isn’t the last we’ve heard of him. He’s a hell of an impact player and his blitz-style kind of rugby remains highly entertaining. Certainly there is nothing funny about drink driving  but now that it’s all over, can we see it for its comical value and let Powell (and I’m certainly not going to call him by his nickname, Braindead) get on with what he does best.