Travel sickness leads to World Cup withdrawal

Mike Kilpatrick, Yahoo! New Zealand Sport August 31, 2011, 1:26 pm
Travel sickness leads to World Cup withdrawal

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Romania's Rugby World Cup hopes have been dealt a late blow after the withdrawal of star Catalin Fercu.

The winger, who was also in the Romanian squad for the 2007 World Cup, refused to travel to New Zealand with the team due to travel sickness.

Adrian Apostol has been called in to replace the player who felt he couldn't deal with a 40-hour journey to these shores.

"After many discussions with Catalin, he told us he cannot pass the fear of flying so many hours," said Alin Petrache, head of the Romanian Rugby Federation.

"We tried to convince him but we didn’t succeed. We are very disappointed about Fercu’s decision, because he was one of our best players, and he proved that in the last two preparation games in Ukraine and France.”

Romania open their World Cup campaign on September 10, against Scotland in Invercargill.

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  1. 0 0
    Trinity04:20pm Wednesday 31st August 2011 ESTReport Abuse

    dope him up and put him on the plane. Benzo is a ok drug for sports

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  2. 0 0
    Barry03:57pm Wednesday 31st August 2011 ESTReport Abuse

    madness have you not heard ov drug tests

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  3. 0 0
    Madness03:42pm Wednesday 31st August 2011 ESTReport Abuse

    If it is indeed a fear of flying (which is not travel sickenss) a decent dose of a short acting benzo would knock him out for the trip or at least mello him to make it here and not adversly affect him beating the All Blacks.

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  4. 0 0
    Hayden03:01pm Wednesday 31st August 2011 ESTReport Abuse

    Well the sad thing is Romania were actually a promising Rugby nation in the 80's & could beat 5 nations sides & even came close to the All Blacks. But they never got accepted into the 5 nations & it's been downhill from then.

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  5. 0 0
    arteyzzz02:47pm Wednesday 31st August 2011 ESTReport Abuse

    Just as well the ABs don't have this problem - they wouldn't go anywhere....has any AB had this problem? How was he helped?

    1 Reply

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