Josh Gardner

Screengrab of David Moffett's wikipedia page that reads: Politics Moffett first made political news in December 2018 when he attacked Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, over a non-binding UN migration compact which the government supported. He called them "traitors" and "leftards" and said: "Next year will likely be your Annus Horibilis because we are coming to get you." These tweets, along attacks on other politicians such as Angela Merkel, received coverage in New Zealand and Britain due to his rugby profile. By the time of these comments, Moffett was a member of the New Conservative Party, and in January 2019, Moffett announced that he had been appointed to its board. Moffett's time in the board appears to have been short; by September 2019 the New Conservative's website no longer listed him as a part of the leadership team.[ In 2019, Moffett founded a political party called the New NZ party (later renamed Real NZ). Journalist Alex Braae described the New NZ party in May 2019 as "a vehicle for David Moffett which is at this stage is unregistered, and mainly appears to consist of aggressive social media posting." The party announced former United Future MP Marc Alexander as its leader. According to its website, the party's policies included opposing "open borders, interference by the UN, Government excess, waste and interference, far left and right ideologies, the PC brigade, tyranny by minorities, unlawful religious beliefs and terrorism". On its website, it used the slogan "WWG1WGA", also used by the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Gee I wonder what David Moffett's been up to since his failed attempt to take over the WRU in 2014, I'm sure he's been bus… OH JESUS CHRIST.

The Scarlets bringing in one of the most reviled and distrusted figures in the history of Welsh rugby in to run the show in the same week their supporters club and local MPs have been outed trying to run a dirty tricks campaign to undermine their closest rival is… well, it's perfectly on brand.

To be fair if I'd chucked out a billion quid I'd never get over it either.

🤷

A bag of the offending item, whose flavour profile I can broadly describe as sitting perfectly between ‘sucking a 9V battery’ and ‘licking piss off a nettle’

I don’t consider myself a vindictive person, but I do now consider it my life’s purpose to hunt down whoever it was at Rowntrees who decided to replace the time-honoured perfection of Jelly Tots with the new abomination that is ‘Jelly Tots Tangy’ in every shop and MAKE THEM PAY.

415: The Pienaar Gap | Blood & Mud Get more from Blood & Mud on Patreon

We bow out for the season with this terrible effort, as per.

w @joshgardner.bsky.social

www.patreon.com/posts/415-pi...

The series is over, which means me and @joshgardner.bsky.social will be with you this very evening to bang on about it for a bit.

Help distract us from bin chat by giving us your #SHITGOOD suggestions below for the last time this season.

Whatever gets you through the day chief.

He’s Lions performance manager - whatever the fuck that is - isn’t he?

A very smart thing to say a fortnight before the extremely poor team that the Lions just about squeaked past have to play both the Springboks and the All Blacks.

In my experience, waffling on for an indeterminate amount of time about nothing in particular is very easy provided you don’t care about entertaining or enlightening people

Farrell totally fucked up the bench two out of the three tests and still won the series handily - that says a lot about this tour I think.

A fittingly cursed game to end a truly cursed tour tho, you have to say.

Kinda wanna give credit to Australia… but at the same time like, congrats you won a dead rubber against a team who were hungover until about 2pm yesterday, and you needed a 40-minute half time to refresh your knackered pack and some cosmic luck in terms of Lions injuries to get over the line?

My face when it’s 6:58am on a Saturday morning and I hear the door of my son’s bedroom opening.

Finn’s just beat his high score on Fruit Ninja. 🙌🏻

It really does come to something when you’re thinking “Oh thank god here’s John Barclay with something to say…”

Having to listen to Will Greenwood doing a 30-minute stream of consciousness lightning delay vamp is what they actually mean when they say the Lions is The Ultimate Test.

I know the conditions is the conditions, but let’s not forget Australia were a lot further ahead this time last week.

The Lions look poor, but unless the Wallabies can physically find something they didn’t have the last two weeks it’s not gonna really matter.

Assume Joe Schmidt is gonna want World Rugby to have a look at that hilariously out of control clear-out from Skelton on Porter given how seriously he takes player safety at the ruck…?

Genuinely can't wait for this fella to go back to writing about horse dancing or tennis or annexing the Sudetenland…whatever it is the Telegraph's Chief Sports Reporter does when he's not bringing culture wars to the Lions Tour, idk.

Get fucking gone, pal.

Latest in my occasional 'Extremely hip fashion brands plumbing rugby deep cuts while the sport struggles for any kind of trend relevance' series.

The first look in Palace's Autumn 2025 Lookbook is a riff on one of my all-time favourite rugby shirts – Canterbury's 1996-99 NPC jersey from Nike.

If there is one place I think he MIGHT end up at straight away, it’s Gloucester.

He knows the team and the coaches, and they don’t have a marquee player for 2025 with Carreras off to Bath.

It’s quite boring, but it’s a better short-term fit than Dimes’ Taurine-Fuelled Moneybags Circus imho.

He signed that agreement in principle so quick Tindall didn’t even have chance to say something offensive about the Welsh before he was out of the room.

I doubt he’ll drop down a level even short term - his tax-free NFL earnings will tide him over until a proper offer comes in

See this is what you have to admire about Leinster - they don’t rest on their laurels.

They sign Reiko Ioane and still are thinking ‘Yeah but how can we make this team even MORE unlikeable?’

Truly pushing the envelope.

Can’t imagine he’ll walk straight back into a contract mind you - mainly because French teams will have their squads set, English clubs are broke and Welsh clubs are a basket case.

Might have to try Japan or bide his time waiting for a medical joker opportunity.

Almost wish I hadn’t deleted all my tweets so I could work out exactly how to-the-day accurate my “Louis Rees-Zammitt will be back in rugby inside 18 months” prediction has ended up being.

Don’t begrudge him giving it a go, but it was always a much longer shot than some wanted to believe.

Lions victory podcast later on, in which me ans @joshgardner.bsky.social promise to spend at least some time on the 2nd Test.

We will also talk about #SHITGOOD so please add your suggestions in the replies.