Neil Francis ‘no longer working’ at Sunday Times after factually incorrect article

Rugby writer Neil Francis has left The Sunday Times just months after a column of his prompted a front page apology.

The Irish rugby ex-international wrote an article about a former schoolmate at Blackrock College, Dublin during the early 1980s named Angelo Andreucetti which proved to be factually incorrect.

The former Ireland rugby international alleged that Mr Andreucetti had died from a heroin addiction in a squat in London in the 1980s destitute and friendless and that his body was brought back to Dublin for burial.

The article was published on Sunday, January 8th.

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None of these details turned out to be correct. The Sunday Times published an apology a week later stating that Mr Andreucetti died from an Aids-related illness and not heroin addiction in a Middlesex hospital in August 1994, aged 32, with friends and family by his bedside.

“His body was not, as incorrectly stated, brought back to Dublin for burial. He was buried in London. He was aged 17 and not 15 in the photograph which accompanied the article.

“The Sunday Times and Neil Francis take this opportunity to correct the record and to apologise for these mistakes.”

Mr Francis has now left The Sunday Times as a columnist, following an internal review by the newspaper of the erroneous column.

A spokeswoman said: “The Sunday Times Ireland confirms Neil Francis is no longer working with the paper.”

The paper also agreed to pay €25,000 to HIV Ireland after issuing the apology. At the time HIV Ireland executive director Stephen O’Hare said it was an “extraordinary gesture by the Andreucetti family following what must have been a very hurtful and distressing experience.

“Not only were the claims in the article shown to be false, they perpetuate, by their very nature, the sort of stigma and shame that has dogged experiences of both HIV and addiction for decades.”

Asked by The Irish Times on Friday about his departure from The Sunday Times, Mr Francis said: “I don’t want to say anything at the moment. Thank you.”

In 2021, Mediahuis Ireland, publisher of Independent.ie, ended Mr Francis’s contract with that organisation after he described a player as having “a David Beckham hair style and an Oompa Loompa tan” – in comments he later apologised for.

Mr Francis, then a columnist with The Sunday Independent, made the comments about the Harlequins, England and Lions outhalf Marcus Smith on Independent.ie’s The Left Wing podcast, which both Harlequins and the Lions described as offensive.