Rugby star’s wife hospitalised after accident

PHUKET TOWN: The wife of top Australian rugby player Kerrod Walters was rushed to the Bangkok Phuket Hospital in the early hours of Sunday (May 9) after an accident in a tuk-tuk near the Safari Club in Patong. Mr Walters told the Gazette that his wife Maureen, 31, was on holiday in Phuket with a friend, staying at the Patong Merlin Hotel, when they and three others hired a tuk-tuk to take them to the Safari Club. Close to the club, Mr Walters said, his wife dropped her wallet outside the vehicle. When she stood up to tap on the driver’s window to ask him to stop, she lost her balance and fell out of the tuk-tuk. “She was very lucky,” said Mr Walters, “because one of the people in the tuk-tuk was a trained nurse. She actually revived her by the roadside.” Mrs Walters was rushed to the hospital’s intensive care unit with a fractured skull, a fractured wrist and a dislocated shoulder. She was released into a private ward yesterday (Tuesday, May 11). She will undergo further scans tomorrow to see whether she is in condition to leave hospital and fly home. Her husband is an international rugby star, having played eight test matches for Australia. He currently plays hooker for the new Gateshead Thunder in Britain’s National Rugby League. On hearing of the accident, he took the first available plane out of England to be at his wife’s bedside, missing a Thunder match. “In a situation like this, life and death, it’s no contest,” he said.