ACT Brumbies players have been involved in disturbances in Cape Town for a second night.
After several players started fighting amongst themselves in a restaurant on Saturday five members of the squad were briefly detained by police in Cape Town early on Monday after jumping on a taxi and ripping out its meter.
Joe Roff, Bill Young, Peter Ryan, Owen Finegan and Rod Kafer were released after they paid the taxi driver - who agreed not to press charges - 4,000 rand for damages to his car.
Taxi driver Riedewaan Abrahams said the "raucously drunk" five had given him trouble as soon as he had picked them up at a club in the Sea Point suburb
at about 1:00 a.m. Monday."They had no respect for me or my car, trashing the interior with food," he said. He claimed the players later threatened him and said they would not pay their fare. "They were getting increasingly abusive. I had no chance against five aggressive rugby players ... so I drove to Sea Point police station."
While Abrahams was inside the police station, the Australians ripped out the taxi's tariff meter, dented the car's roof by jumping on it and pushed the car down the road - watched all the while on a security camera inside the charge office.
An unnamed Sea Point policeman, who went after them with a colleague, said: "They were not interested in accompanying us back to the station so we had to radio for reinforcements so that we could march them back."I don't think they realised the seriousness of their deeds. They stole a car, they maliciously damaged it, they threatened Abrahams and they refused to pay him."
Brumbies manager Phil Thompson later called an "emergency meeting" with the players and confirmed their names. The five were earlier thrown out of Sea Point restaurant Saul's, after behaving badly and insulting the staff.
The restaurant manager said: "One of them climbed on the table and lay down on it and another one poured tomato sauce into an ashtray, just like naughty children. They were extremely rowdy and eating like pigs, creating a big mess."