Maybe said kidney should now be donated to his father, forcibly......might make the idiot think twice before going out on a bender.

So at what age would you not make such allowances ?

Compare and contrast.

"We've never had a curfew, it's down to personal discipline and our discipline's been pretty good over a long period of time."

- Stephen Fleming, quoted on Cricinfo.

Maybe, just maybe, that's a bit of spin from Fleming but if it's true then that says more about our own elite sporting culture than anything else.

Nazza, I am not making allowances, I am merely stating that at 21 one is still impressionable.

I imagine being on tour with the current England set up must be a bit like a Club 18-30 holiday if such things still exist. I mean you got the wives and the girlfriends, you got the sun, the sea, the surf and turf, the money to burn, a couple or three reasonably meaningless games of hit and giggle cricket, and Freddie's there with his map of the best pubs for all night lock-ins.

Yes, at twenty-one you are quite likely to follow the crowd to the nearest watering hole, especially when you don't have to drive back. And at twenty-two, and twenty-three, perhaps even at twenty-seven and twenty-eight.

One would hope that the hellish onset of the dreaded thirties [sigh] would begin to have an effect on those of the grand old age of twenty-nine.

Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't.

And perhaps too much money, too young (see under association footballers!) isn't such a good recipe for bringing home the point for lads who have to pay massive fines and lose their licence for a year.

But in the grand scheme of things Plunkett WAS excessively stupid for driving while over the limit. And just a little bit stupid for joining in on an all night drinking binge with his teammates in the Caribbean.

Perhaps the people with the most to lose are Lewis and Nixon and, with the emergence of Collingwood , perhaps Bell too.

I guess somewhere in all of this Nixon must have been thinking that his time at the "top" is going to be pretty short-lived anyway, England haven't got a second genuine keeper in the Caribbean and he might as well enjoy himself while it lasts. Lewis has probably thought that he could still get into the regular Test team, but like John Morris (who was merely David Gower's passenger, in a flying incident twenty-or-so years ago) he should probably forget about it now.

Bell might have to worry, unless he works out how to exceed sixty in the next two or three matches. And that would be a shame, because he is still young and even at 24, still pretty promising.
Sadly, of course, there comes a point at which the promise MUST be fulfilled. And as with many England players, in all sports, I feel this is seldom taken into account.

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Red-it, Red-it, Read it and wept

Now I am 44 it does seem very young. Peoples behaviour can't always be explained. Freddie might not know why he did what he did. It was proabably spur of the moment stuff a realease from the confines of a watched life.

Its hardly the end of the world what he did its just not responsible. We have all let people down before.

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"Checkout the big brain on Brett" Pulp Fiction

flanflinger with respect - like I said earlier, Flintoff would say what he was told to say.

Do you really believe he agree's on point 4, that the punishment is correct?.

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Ern

Ern,

I agree that he probably has to say what he has been told to say, we may not know until after he retires whether he did.

But if you have done something very wrong, and you realise it, and you get punished, in the back of your mind you know it was right.

People have the wrong idea of what good discipline is. When you punish a child for reaching to touch a hot fire, you are not doing it out of spite, but to protect them.

If Flintoff takes this punishment, like a man, he will realise that this is for his own good. How can he perform at his best if he is not getting enough sleep, and drinking like a fish??

Losing the vice-captaincy hurts Flintoff, but as you also have expressed because of the lack of another candidate, it also hurts England. But if it focuses Freddie, then it will benefit him and England in the long term.

Also, have you watched the interview. For me it is frank, and honest, and it seems like Fred knows he is in the wrong. Fred responds well to bollocking (Fairbrother's famous your "wasting your talent talk" turned him from fat party boy into professional sportsman) maybe after the Ashes he needed to get his feet back on the ground and get back to what he is good at - Scoring runs and Taking Wickets.

If that is true, then giving him the captaincy for the Ashes was about the dumbest move the EWCB could have made.

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Red-it, Red-it, Read it and wept

I am older than you - I can't swim but that won't stop me going in the Med on a pedalo later this year, to be honest it won't be at night - or under the fluence.

But us British are good at shooting ourselves in the foot, really in the middle of a poor start, to drop Flintoff was really not responsible - any disipline could have been hand out AFTER the world Cup, he could have had an official warning for the time being coupled with a fine like the rest of the drinkers.

Why has Flintoff been punnished with a tripple barreled punishment?, I have heard on this forum that he broke some curfew, well the fact is he could not have broken a curfew, because Englnd don't have a curfew on players in place click here .
Whatever the right or wrongs of gong out in a pedalo early in the morning, that was not against the England touring rules, there is no curfew, and I doubt there is a ban on being in a pedalo (by the way - he was never in danger - Flintoff says "Poetic Licence" had been uses) in other words sensationalised.

So it boils down to having a drink to many - if so knowing he did not put himself in danger (his words) - also knowing he did NOT break no curfew - the punishment did not fit the crime.

Like I say the British are good at shooting themselves in the foot, this caring government of ours has put a 'green tax on air fairs' unilateraly in our names, telling us that they (we) are setting an example, it has cost me more money this year to fly, no other country has followed the Great British example - and no other country would have humiliated their best player in the middle of the #1 PJ cricket tournament either.

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Ern

1. I am proud of my country doing something to act against rising CO2 levels, and hope that at some point the big polluters like the USA, India and China will follow our lead - but that is another matter

2. As far as I am aware no other country has had six of it's players go out on the lash, with the vice-Captain then needed to be rescued for riding a pedalo.

You are right, there is not a curfew, but players are left to act sensibly. However, if a player is asked to use his discretion and then acts like a fool, should he still be punished? With adults you don't need hard and fast rules, some are implicit.

PS Ern, initally your argument against this penalty was that Freddie was not one of the latter stop outs, and went home early, but felt a bit warm and so went on a pedalo at 4 in the morning, do you now accept that Freddie, after his own admission, had had a few drinks more than he should have.