The hilarious reason England centre Manu Tuilagi got arrested

From drunken dares to outright misadventure, here are five of the funniest, most spectacularly ill-judged arrests rugby players have managed to rack up over the years.

In one of rugby’s most legendary off-field escapades, Wales forward Andy Powell celebrated a Six Nations win in 2010 by doing what any sensible man wouldn’t: he “borrowed” a golf cart and took it for a spin on the M4.

Fresh from Wales’ dramatic 31–24 victory over Scotland, Powell continued the festivities well into the night at the team’s Vale Resort base. By dawn, he and a friend had somehow acquired a golf buggy and decided the motorway was the most logical place to take it.

Police finally intercepted the pair at 5:40am at a service station a few miles down the road, where Powell was arrested for driving a mechanically propelled vehicle while unfit through drink. The Welsh Rugby Union promptly suspended him for breaching the team’s code of conduct.

Powell, a Lions tourist the year before, later pleaded guilty, earning a 15-month driving ban and a fine. The incident ultimately ended his involvement in that year’s Six Nations—and went down as one of rugby’s most chaotic comedowns.

England No. 8 Billy Vunipola made headlines in 2024 after an early-morning incident in a Palma bar that escalated from rowdy to surreal with remarkable speed.

According to Spanish police, Vunipola—shirt off, mood up—began threatening customers and staff with bottles and chairs inside Epic bar. Standing 6ft 2in and weighing over 20 stone, he naturally presented a challenge for officers trying to calm things down.

The solution? Tasers. Plural.

Reports claim it took two taser shots to subdue him after he allegedly struck an officer. Vunipola was then taken to hospital and later filmed being escorted from a police van into the local station. The whole episode left fans half-shocked, half-impressed by the sheer physical resilience required to tank two tasers before breakfast.

Mathieu Bastareaud’s 2009 controversy in Wellington wasn’t technically an arrest, but it earns a spot for being one of rugby’s most bizarre self-inflicted scandals.

After France’s Test loss to the All Blacks, Bastareaud returned to the team hotel sporting a badly cut face. He initially claimed he’d been ambushed by a group of locals on the street—prompting outrage in both France and New Zealand.

But the truth, when it emerged, was far less dramatic: he’d simply fallen over in his hotel room while drinking and made the story up to cover his tracks. The fallout caused a diplomatic stir, a media circus and a lesson in why inventing attackers is rarely the best solution to a clumsy night out.

After England’s disappointing exit from the 2011 Rugby World Cup, centre Manu Tuilagi tried to blow off some steam. Unfortunately, he chose to do so by jumping off a ferry in Auckland.

The then-20-year-old leapt from the vessel and swam to a nearby pier, where police briefly detained him before issuing a formal warning. England’s management wasn’t amused either, fining him £3,000.

Tuilagi later apologised, calling it a “silly thing to do,” which may be underselling the fact that he had just jumped into open water off a moving boat. Whether alcohol played a role remains officially unconfirmed—but the mood of England’s World Cup campaign suggests it’s at least plausible.

Danny Care had a turbulent end to 2011 and start to 2012, culminating in yet another scrape with the law—this time for urinating on the steps of the Queens Hotel in Leeds.

British Transport Police found the Harlequins scrum-half relieving himself outside the hotel just after 3am. He was arrested, taken to the station, questioned and ultimately cautioned for being drunk and disorderly.

It wasn’t an isolated incident. Only weeks earlier, Care had been fined over £3,000 and banned from driving for 16 months after pleading guilty to drink-driving on New Year’s Day. England promptly dropped him from their Six Nations squad, marking a spectacularly unglamorous off-field hat-trick for the young No. 9.