CLERMONT-FERRAND, France, Sept 8 AFP - French rugby club Clermont will be without Zac Guildford for up to four weeks after the former All Black and teammate Jonathan Davies were assaulted.
The 25-year-old Kiwi, who had a record of ill discipline off the pitch in New Zealand before he made the move to France in the summer, was left with a badly-bruised jaw.
The winger had been out celebrating early on Sunday morning with his team-mates after a Top 14 victory over Racing-Metro, the birth of team-mate Camille Lopez's child and the birthday of teammate Jamie Cudmore.
Both he and Davies were set upon by three individuals in the centre of town, and Guildford was kicked in the face when he fell to the ground.
He was taken to hospital while the three assailants escaped and have yet to be identified.
Clermont's sporting director Jean-Marc Lhermet said Guildford was an innocent party.
"He is the victim," Lhermet said on Monday
"We have had nothing to reproach him over since he arrived.
"It is true we would have preferred he didn't find himself mixed up in this but similarly I wouldn't want aspersions made regarding his past."
Guildford, who scored six tries in 11 matches for the All Blacks, signed a two-year contract with the 2013 European Cup finalists with the option for another year.
Guildford's notoriety reached a peak when he attacked two men in a bar in the Cook Islands in a nude, drunken rage, which led to him admitting to having alcoholism problems.
They stemmed in no small part from the personal tragedy that struck him in 2009 when his father died of a heart attack while watching from the stands as his son and his New Zealand teammates won the Junior World Cup title in Tokyo.
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