…this is terrible news. 
He had just finished a great season for Wellington, was just about to get on a plane for the IPL, and had just started that long battle to fight his personal demons. He is currently in an induced coma in intensive care: with a fractured skull and a possible punctured lung.
A terrible and cowardly attack, and I hope the perpetrators are quickly brought to justice. However, what was a guy with a bad history of alcohol incidents doing in a bar after 11:30pm on a Wednesday night?
…it doesn’t matter.
He has been oUt of internationals for nearly two years. What is the straight dope on the reason?
He’s had a history of alcohol related incidents, including severing a tendon punching out a toilet window. And some other injury worries. The saddest thing is he looked to have turned his life around and was playing well domestically (as Banquet Bear pointed out in the OP).
Sad news, hope he gets well and soon.
This, obviously, is pretty terrible. Hope he makes a speedy recovery.
Related and one for our Kiwi board members I guess:
I love rugby and I love cricket. As a result, I go on a number of forums about these sports and pick up stuff from around the world about both sports (I’m still incredulous that I didn’t know more about the Hesson/Taylor/BMac stuff but there you go).
Ryder has had problems with the drink but he is not alone in the NZ sporting fraternity. Zac Guildford (wing/FB for the All Blacks) has said that he is going into rehab for the booze (Article here) and he’s not alone - reportedly 25 players in the last 5 years have sought help with respect to booze in the rugby ranks in NZ. Jimmy Cowan for one has had documented problems with drink. Dan Vettori and Jeetan Patel have had documented incidents with booze on the NZ cricket side of things too.
What is going on here? Is it that NZ is a small country and the players, as a result, are living in a fishbowl, so stuff gets blown out of proportion (I sense that we would have similar stories rampant in the UK if it weren’t for the fact that our footballers earn so much money that they can effectively buy their privacy by getting wasted in exclusive places)? Or is there a genuine drinking culture issue in NZ? Or are there other factors that I am not seeing?
There is a binge drinking culture in New Zealand - linked with sports, but not exclusively.
The lowering of the drinking age from 20 to 18 hasn’t helped.
News update. Two men arrested.
lisiate your comment is ridiculous. Ryder is of age and has every right to be in a bar. Do you ask woman who were raped what they were doing in a bar/wearing a tight sweater/on the street at 9 p.m. by themselves. Really!
No Annie-Xmas that is the most absurd comparison I have ever heard.:rolleyes: Its akin to Godwinizing the thread. Ryder is a supremely gifted athlete who has been fortunate enough to play his sport at the highest level and be spectacularly compensated for that. His drinking habits have adversely affected his career, his prospects and his behaviour and he has been attempting to get beyond that.
So yes, its a perfectly fair question.
I missed this yesterday as I was playing village cricket and drinking…,
To add to AK84’s able defence of my initial question. Ryder is indeed an adult and as such should be able to make his own decisions. Most of us can enjoy a few beers and a bit of a yarn with our mates with no adverse consequences other than a bit of a sore head and a lighter wallet the next day. But a significant percentage of people cannot. And Ryder’s history demonstrates that he falls into the latter category. It was his choice to ignore this and I believe he therefore must take responsibility for that choice.
This doesn’t mean that the assailants bear any less culpability for their actions, and I am pleased to see that they have been arrested.
He’s quite possibly the most talented New Zealand batsman of his generation and if it weren’t for his problems with alcohol he’d have played 58 tests rather than 18. And that’s a shame. I hope he makes a full recovery.
…actually I think that Annie-Xmas’s depiction is accurate. Ryder didn’t provoke the incident, he apparently hadn’t been drinking, all he did was stop and talk to what he thought was a fan.
His choice here had nothing to do with the assault. We don’t blame the victim in rape cases but you seem to think that Ryder bares a proportion of the blame here. Well I don’t. He doesn’t have to take responsibility for getting attacked by a bunch of thugs.
The news media has spent enough time dredging up the past: I don’t think we need to do that here.