Flutey's Seen the Light

Riki Flutey was the man of the match in the Calcutta Cup win for England, and rightly so. Six days earlier he pushed Tom Croft for the same distinction against France. He ended the Six Nations campaign as the tournament’s top try scorer and can now start planning to become the first man in history ever to play against and for the British & Irish Lions. Ask anyone in rugby, from former club London Irish to current club London Wasps, and to England, and they will tell you that the karaoke-loving inside centre is the nicest man in rugby. The England star the English public knows least about appears to have the world at his feet right now. In truth he has just completed a torturous road to redemption.

Sitting in a quiet delicatessen a mile away from the Twickenham stadium, Flutey shakes his head at all this and struggles to comprehend how it has all happened. “I’ve come a long, long way,” the 29-year-old offers, after an interminable pause. “I was a little Maori boy who went to a tiny school in Wairarapa on the southern-most tip of New Zealand’s North Island barefoot. I didn’t think I’d ever leave North Island, let alone New Zealand. My dream was to play for the All Blacks, but it never happened. And now I’m on the other side of the world, playing for England in the Six Nations and against the best players in the game. I have two beautiful children and a beautiful, understanding wife, and life could not be any better than it is right now. Most of all, I am fully aware of what might have been.”

That last remark is the key to everything that makes up the man, and the redemption he has searched for, and found. None of this would have happened had a younger Flutey not been forced to focus on the error of his ways as he sat alone and scared witless on the floor of a police cell in Argentina not knowing whether his violent actions would lead to lengthy imprisonment or even physical abuse.

It was a grave mistake on his part that led to being charged with grievous bodily harm after attacking an Argentinian student in the city of Rosario while on tour with the Wellington Academy, and it would live with him, incredibly, right up to December last year, four games into his England international carer, when the police in Argentina finally dropped the case, seven years’ later.  

It was December, 2001 and Flutey, by his own admission, had veered dangerously off the rails. “I’d joined Wellington and for a little country boy coming to the big city meant plenty of distractions for a 21-year-old,” he admits, eager to deal with his past demons.

“I’ll be honest. I enjoyed drinking with my new teammates. A lot of drinking. I’d go out on Wednesdays, Saturdays, even Friday nights before a game. I’d get in to a load of fights. And I’d also spend most of my money on gambling. There was a big poker culture in the team and that’s where my money went. A week before pay day I’d be out of money and go asking my mother for $500 to tidy me over, even though I was on comparatively good money for a kid. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but that’s how I was.”

Then came the tour to Argentina, which coincided with the All Blacks taking on the Pumas. Flutey, as a young, naïve traveller with more than a few personality problems, had endured a difficult tour. “One of my teammates had been robbed earlier in the tour. I remember him coming back crying, with his clothes ripped and with his money and jewellery taken from him. Another time I received a phone call one night from a man who said he was a local journalist, and then kept on asking if I’d have sex with him. Like I said, I was just a kid from a tiny dot in the world, and I knew nothing of these things. I guess I was angry and I was already pretty mixed up.”

None of which, as Flutey readily agrees, excuses what happened next. He and some colleagues had been drinking for most of the night when he became embroiled in an argument with a local student named Gabriel Capotosti. It ended with Flutey attacking the teenager, leaving Capotosti with a broken nose and fractured right eye socket which, according to reports, required corrective plastic surgery.

“I got into a confrontation and just lashed out,” Flutey explains, as his eyes looked down at the table he was sitting beside. “I knew immediately that what I’d done was very wrong, and I knew I was in big trouble.”

He was arrested and thrown into a police cell where he would fester for four days and nights while frantic negotiations took place between Argentina and the Wellington Rugby Union. It was, quite evidently, the darkest four days of the man’s life.

“I look back at that guy sitting in that cell now and barely recognise him,” Flutey acknowledges, showing astonishing bravery to talk so candidly about an experience that many would hope would just disappear. “I’d let myself down, my family, my friends and teammates. I’d let anyone who’d ever been associated with me down. Most of all I let my now wife down, Sarah, who supported me despite my actions. She went through everything with me: the gambling, the fighting, the drinking, and now the arrest in a foreign country thousands of miles from home. I sometimes wonder why she stuck with me. And I’m so glad she did.”

Four days in a strange police cell on another continent gives you time to think, and that’s exactly what Flutey did. He thought about his actions, both back home and there in Rosario. He thought about the direction he has heading. And he thought about his family. During all this time he feared for his immediate future.

“One time a couple of guards came into my cell and stood over me for five minutes, just staring. That was the scariest point. I had no idea what their plans were and feared I was about to get a beating, or they’d do whatever they wanted to do to me. In fairness I was treated perfectly well but I was prepared for anything.    

“I knew I had to change so many aspects of my lifestyle and attitude. It was the biggest kick up the backside imaginable for me, and it worked. I returned to New Zealand a changed man, and it’s never left me.”

Before this Flutey was moved from the cell to house arrest at the Imperial Hotel in Rosario, until the Wellington RFU paid out the NZ $85,000 bail and he returned chastened to North Island. The Capotosti family filed a civil suit against Flutey as well, but although this was eventually dropped the criminal case launched by the Rosario police would last right up until just before last Christmas, when Flutey, given the option of serving community service in Argentina or signing a statute of limitation which declared that the case would be dropped if he does not re-offend over a period of time, chose the latter.

Back in 2001 Flutey was relieved to receive the support of his family, and his teammates. “I told them I wasn’t going out drinking with them again, and they all helped me by never trying to dissuade me, or buy me drinks. The union also ordered me to stop drinking, which I did. I didn’t need them to tell me. I’d already made up my mind. If I hadn’t changed my ways, I can say with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t be sitting here today, and I certainly wouldn’t be an international rugby player, let alone an England player. I sometimes daren’t think what might have happened.”

Although he became a reformed character Flutey still had the criminal case hanging over him for all this time. Unbeknown to anyone outside his close family, even when he made his debut for England against the Pacific Islanders in November, and even when he fronted up to his former friends and teammates performing the haka when England faced New Zealand, Flutey was still dealing with the very real threat of police action.

“My wife dealt with much of the case to allow me to focus on my rugby and getting my life back on track,” Flutey explains. “She handled the lawyers, the police, everyone, and often she wouldn’t tell me about some worrying emails she’d received about the case because she knew I’d be upset. I’ve been upset enough about it, and I can’t say sorry enough for what I did, but it was a long time ago when I was a completely different person. It was my biggest and hardest lesson in life, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am that it is finally over.”

It goes a long way to explaining why he was able to handle failing to make the senior All Blacks squad, despite representing his country at every age level, and leading the haka when New Zealand won the Under 19 Wold Cup by beating Wales in Wales alongside teammates such as Jerry Collins and Aaron Mauger.

“I only have myself to blame for that,” he tells you, again refreshingly honest. “I became too much of a utility back at Wellington and, although it was great training and occasionally playing alongside the likes of Jonah Lomu, Christian Cullen and Tana Umaga, I grew frustrated at only getting 20 minutes or so in a match. When I did get the chance to nail down a jersey I never took it.”

At 25 he joined London Irish, which effectively ended any chance of him becoming an All Black. “I’d just got married to Sarah and I knew I needed a fresh challenge. Nobody knew me, and it gave me the chance to stick to one position. Although I came as a ten, I soon slotted into twelve and have stayed there ever since. The move to Wasps presented another challenge because I knew just by making the starting XV I’d be hard pushed, and there’s no doubt that the move has raised my game to the point it is at now.”

When the call came from Martin Johnson last summer Flutey, who had qualified for England under the residency rules, had already sought out advice from his family, and from friends like Norm Hewitt, the former New Zealand hooker who’d supported him in the aftermath of Argentina. “They all told me to go for it, and that’s what I told Johnno,” he recalls.

After that nothing fazed the man, even the sight of so many former teammates performing the haka in front of him on the Twickenham turf. “I thought I’d get emotional but I was thinking was that I’d taught quite a few of them how to do it.” Afterwards he was the first into the All Blacks dressing room to swap stories and shake hands.

As the Six Nations progressed so Flutey’s star shone more brightly, although he puts this down to the clearer understanding of his teammates to the job in hand. “It’s just taken a little time,” he insists. “But we can all see that we’re getting there. I won’t lie to you, though. Scoring those two tries against France with Sarah sitting in the stands was very special for me. It would have been very hard to believe seven years ago as I sat in that police cell.”

The Fluteys, together with their two young children, will be moving to Brive next season for another new adventure. “I’m not 21 any more, my career could end with an injury tomorrow and I have a young family to feed,” he says. “There’s no point hiding from the fact that I’ve got a good opportunity with Brive, although it’s only happening because they will release for me England duties whenever asked.”

Before that there is every chance he will be called up by his former Wasps boss Ian McGeechan to play against South Africa as a British & Irish Lion in the test series, four years after appearing as a substitute for Wellington against the Lions. “I was only told I’d be making history as the first player to play for and against the Lions the other day, and it’s a fantastic thought,” he admits.

If he had not been called to the Lions’ den, then he would undoubtedly have joined England on their one test summer tour, even if it meant a first return to Argentina since his deserved incarceration back in 2001. Back then he was bad news. Now the bottle, the cards and the fists have been replaced by his beloved karaoke machine, training and fatherhood, and the shambles of his early career has been transformed into a model professional making giant strides now in the global game of rugby.

“It is something I’m not very proud about, but at the same time it tells you that anyone can turn their lives around of they really want,” Riki Flutey concludes, as he sits back with an expression almost of relief that he has this monkey of his back. “That’s what I meant about coming a long way in life. You don’t get much further than travelling from New Zealand to England, but that’s nothing compared to the journey I’ve made in my soul.”

This article, written by Ian Stafford, appeared in Rugby World magazine. For 30% a subscription to Rugby World, the world's best-selling rugby magazine, see www.rugbyworld.com