All Blacks greats Justin Marshall and Andrew Mehrtens have shared an “amusing” story which confirmed it pays not to get on the wrong side of Richard Loe.
Chatting with Sean Maloney on Stan Sport’s Between Two Posts, the former halves partners agreed ex-prop Loe ranked highly on rugby’s ‘don’t poke the bear’ list.
“I survived a Richard Loe incident,” Mehrtens revealed, before passing the mic to Marshall who had a better recollection of the drama.
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“Mehrts was having a couple of beers, we were in a court session having a few drinks and he accidentally knocked his drink and it went all over Richard Loe’s leg,” Marshall recalled.
“He thought that was quite amusing and he laughed and laughed and laughed. He didn’t say sorry, didn’t apologise and thought it was quite funny.
“Richard Loe just stared at him and I thought ‘uh, oh.’ Mehrts thought it was quite humorous and turned away to start chatting to someone else.
Sean Maloney and Andrew Mehrtens are joined by Justin Marshall from the Stan Sport sofa. The Kiwi duo discuss the old days at the Crusaders, All Blacks and on tour as well as a review of Super Round, including a thrilling Super W final
https://omny.fm/shows/between-two-posts-1/justin-marshall-and-super-round/embed
“Richard Loe got up behind him, went round the back of him, got his arm around his neck, lifted him up out of his chair, squeezed him and… put him in a sleeper move. Yeah, quite amusing.”
Unless you were Mehrtens, who thankfully survived the night but the horrors weren’t over.
“I woke up the next morning and wandered down to breakfast, walked in and didn’t have a lot of recollection of the evening,” the former five-eighth said.
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“I started hearing all these snickers and giggles as I walked in and the boys were all eating breakfast. I started to put two and two together. Good mate though – I mean if I hadn’t been mates with Richard Loe it would have been a lot worse. That was gentle.
“Affectionate.”
Loe holds an infamous place in Bledisloe Cup history as the villain who rearranged Wallabies winger Paul Carozza’s face with his forearm in Brisbane in 1992.
Carozza later said Loe “seems an OK guy off the field but I guess he had a bit of lunatic about him on the field.”
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