THE EPCR IS carrying out an investigation into comments made by Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal in response to Mathieu Bastereaud’s citing for calling an opponent a “fucking faggot”.

Boudjellal’s remarks were published in an interview with French rugby website rugbyrama.fr, and accused ‘the Welsh and Irish side of the EPCR’ of hypocrisy, suggesting members from both countries lacked morality.

The 57-year-old businessman went on to claim that he, like Basteraud, wasn’t homophobic, but that he has ‘called someone a faggot’ as the term has ‘entered into common usage’, and that it might be the first thing that springs to mind during a verbal argument.

“What I fear is the ‘mormon’ side of the EPCR with the Welsh and the Irish,” Boudjellal told Rugbyrama.

These are people who preach morality although they haven’t any themselves. The same people who have [government] ministers who get themselves whipped in private but pass themselves off as ‘clean’ guys in public.

“In my view, we’re talking about an insult that has entered common language. At no point did Mathieu Bastareaud seek to make a judgment as to the sexual orientation of the player in question. It’s like when I call someone a son of a bitch. Generally I don’t know his mother.

I’m not homophobic either, but I have called someone ‘a faggot’. It has entered into common usage, it’s what comes to mind first in a row. But we’re in an age in which morality has taken on a great importance.

“[It's] as if people are incapable of understanding that, and to take things into consideration… The only area in which humour doesn’t have a place is paedophilia. What Mathieu said was a slip in the heat of the action.”

If EPCR considers that the comments amount to misconduct under its Disciplinary Rules, Boudjellal may face disciplinary action.

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