i believe that there is a significant element of truth to what worthington has said
but, it's all rumor. whether or not that deserves to end up in the papers is another thing.
rumors of this nature have been around for a long time about herbert and how he manages his players, but they never found the papers before.
This is very newsworthy in that it shows that there is dissent amongst the players in the management of the entire campaign. Couple that with the fairly strident calls for better preparation which reflects what a lot of people have been saying from the oustide about NZF's organisation and you have a fairly major case for change.
No-one is commenting on the fact that Ricki actually roasted the players fairly hard for their performance in Mexico at the time (a "non-valid performance"), which actually may not be particularly unfair, but then repeated that after the second leg. Oddly, those quotes didn't really make it into the NZ media other than in passing - which may reflect bias against Herbert - although blaming the players doesn't reflect that well on him either.
In essence this article could well be viewed as the players having their say back about the campaign i.e. don't blame us gov.