The Independent's Chris Hewett provides his take on the latest development involving Mike Tindall.
"Mike Tindall, the England centre whose drunken antics during the early stages of the recent World Cup in New Zealand were a significant factor in the collapse of the national team's campaign, was last night reinstated to the elite squad by the Rugby Football Union's outgoing chief executive Martyn Thomas, whose decision will be widely seen as the latest blow struck in Twickenham's increasingly destructive committee-room conflict. Tindall also finds himself £10,000 better off, having had a £25,000 fine cut by two-fifths on appeal.
The Gloucester midfielder and occasional England captain, who earned a World Cup winner's medal in 2003 and also happens to be the newest member of the extended Royal family, found himself plastered all over the newspapers at home and abroad – not to mention every celebrity website – after drinking himself stupid during a players' night out following the opening pool victory over Argentina in September. Security cameras at a Queenstown bar showed him in an advanced state of inebriation, canoodling with a blonde woman who, it was later claimed, was an old friend of Tindall and his wife of a few weeks, Zara Phillips."
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