Following Nick Mallett's daft decision to play Mauro Bergamasco at scrum-half earlier in the Six Nations tournament, the Independent looks at other ploys that proved unwise.
"A feature of the Lions' troubled tour to Australia in 2001 was the on-going spat between Austin Healey (right) and Wallaby lock Justin Harrison. At Gosford, against Australia A, Harrison had chased the scrum-half out of a ruck after seeing him hit one of his team-mates in retaliation for a kick on Will Greenwood.
"They met again when the Lions met the ACT Brumbies a week later. Harrison kneed Healey in the thigh. The injury would force the England No.9 to miss the second Test yet he still managed to scored two tries against the Brumbies and after both the pair indulged in some verbal sparring. When the Wallabies called up Harrison for the decisive third Test, Healey described the lock in his newspaper column as a 'a plod, a plank and an ape.' Healey was later fined for his comments and publicly rebuked by Lions coach Graham Henry, and Harrison was to have the last laugh, stealing the crucial last minute lineout in the third Test to clinch an Australia series victory.
"...As acts of brainlessness go, the decision by France's most capped prop Sylvain Marconnet to go on a skiing holiday in the middle of the 2007 Six Nations with a World Cup to look forward to later in the year, takes some beating. Inevitability, the 30-year-old Stade Francais prop suffered a double fracture of the left tibia, which required an operation to insert a screw in the bone, ruling him out for five months and the World Cup in his own country."
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