News

Tuqiri turned down the Basques

August 04 2008

It's not often you hear the story, but one of the south's more established stars has turned down big bucks on offer from France.

Lote Tuqiri revealed on Monday that he had been approached by Bayonne a couple of months ago, offering a staggering A$2.5m ($2.3m) for a three-year contract - roughly the same amount of time his ARU contract has to run.

Tuqiri turned down the offer, but did not rule out becoming one of those rushing for late-career riches in the future

"I have been approached by Bayonne," Tuqiri said to The Australian.

"I told them I wasn't interested now, but maybe later. It's a very interesting situation over in France at the moment."

Things are also pretty interesting in the Tri-Nations, in which Australia crashed 39-10 to New Zealand on Saturday in their first loss since Robbie Deans took over as coach, and just a week after beating New Zealand 34-19 in Sydney.

Tuqiri praised his opposition for their strength in bouncing back from defeat, and for the way in which all the Australian threats were comprehensively nullified in the match.

"We just had to get down there and the thing is we couldn't get down there. They didn't allow us," he said.

"The only set plays we had at that point we scored points off. We scored that penalty (Matt Giteau) and then we scored that try (Adam Ashley-Cooper).

"It was frustrating in the sense that we couldn't get down there, but they didn't let us.

"You knew to a point what they were going to do. They just did it well and did it better.

Australia have a handy three-week break before their next match, the first of an away double-header against South Africa in Durban on August 23. once again, Australia will be fighting to banish the demon of defeat that haunts them on the road.

"We have beaten them already, but they are 10-15 points better over there," he said.

"We got shown up (in Auckland) and that won't happen again. We have to play harder than we did in Perth when we beat them. We have to try and take the crowd out of it first and foremost. They really get off on the crowd and how much they pump them up.

"It's going to be tough, but we have certainly shown we can beat them. It's not a thing we haven't done. We just have to do it over there."