Pablo Matera has been stripped of the Argentina captaincy and suspended along with teammates Guido Petti and Santiago Socino for racist social media posts, the Argentine Rugby Union (UAR) revealed on Tuesday.
The scandal has thrown the Argentina camp into crisis days before their final Tri-Nations match against Australia in Sydney on Saturday.
The UAR says its board had met urgently after revelations of the players’ “discriminatory” posts between 2011 and 2013.
The players’ social media accounts were closed on Tuesday, but screenshots of past posts which disparaged black people and people from other South American nations circulated widely.
One of the posts read: “SUDAFRICA BABY! Por fin me voy de este país Ileno de negros. OUCH!”.
Google translates that into: “South Africa baby! At last I’m leaving this country full of blacks. Ouch!”.
He apologised on Tuesday, saying: “I am very ashamed.
“Sorry to all those who were offended by the barbarities that I wrote. At that time I never imagined who I was going to become. Today I have to own what I said nine years ago.”
Ian Ransom | [email protected]