Zara hits the headlines in New Zealand

Zara Phillips has made a surprise arrival in New Zealand, but has yet to see her husband, England centre Mike Tindall, the New Zealand Herald reported on Thursday.

The granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth was pictured at an evening charity event for the CatWalk Spinal Cord Injury Trust in Auckland.

The newspaper said that Phillips, “wearing a figure-hugging dress and with her hair slicked back” made no mention of the headlines that followed her husband’s boozy night out in Queenstown after the game against Argentina.

She told the audience: “Hopefully there will be an All Blacks-England Final.”

Phillips, 30, who married Tindall less than two months ago in Edinburgh, had not been due in New Zealand for two more weeks, but brought forward her trip, the newspaper reported.

The England team were caught on security cameras in a bar during their night out celebrating the win over Argentina in their opening World Cup match.

At one stage in the video, the England centre is seen with his arms around an unidentified blonde woman who also kisses him on the top of the head.

Tindall, not selected for England’s subsequent 41-10 win over Georgia, a decision team manager Martin Johnson insisted was purely a matter of squad rotation, was included in the side announced Thursday for this Saturday’s pool clash with Romania in Dunedin.

In his first public speaking appearance since the incident, Tindall appeared alongside Johnson at the team announcement press conference in Dunedin on Thursday, where both men shied away from discussing the 32-year-old Gloucester midfielder’s off-field conduct.

“I’ve been disappointed, you want to play every game,” said Tindall.

Asked about how his own game would shape up in the light of recent events, he said he hoped it would “be fine”.

And when a television reporter tried to question Johnson about the events in Queenstown, England’s 2003 World Cup-winning captain cut him off by saying:  “We’ve put it to bed, it’s not an issue. We are looking forward to the game.

“I talked to you (the media) last week what happened. The guys went out and had a drink.”

A 40-year-old bouncer has subsequently been charged with accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes.

A spokeswoman for Zara Phillips subsequently insisted the woman seen with Tindall was just an old friend and that the incident had been “blown out of all proportion”.

“This girl is a friend of Zara and Mike’s and has known Mike since university days. She is an English girl living in Australia who was at their wedding,” she said

Nevertheless the images, and the subsequent headlines, forced England coach Johnson to defend his players for going out.

The Herald said Phillips, a sportswoman in her own right as a three-day event rider, was expected to travel to Dunedin to meet Tindall on Friday.

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