RFU pressured players

The newspaper said the cash was to compensate her for alleged verbal sexual harassment by the players at the team hotel in Dunedin in September - for which the police found no case to answer - and to prevent her selling her story to the media.

England's James Haskell, Chris Ashton and Dylan Hartley refused to pay the money, saying they had done nothing wrong, The Times reported.

The RFU was unavailable for comment when contacted by Reuters.

Chambermaid Annabel Newton alleged that she had been traumatised and had left the players' room in tears but the incident was recorded on a camera by Haskell, which showed her with her thumbs up and smiling, the paper added.

The RFU said in a statement earlier this month that the "allegations of very serious wrongdoing" against the three players were "entirely false".

One of the players, quoted anonymously in a confidential Rugby Players' Association report into the World Cup debacle, which was leaked to The Times, said that two days before the Scotland game he was told he had 24 hours to decide whether to settle with the chambermaid for NZ$30,000 or not.

"Paying the money seemed to be the advice. Another option wasn't really given," the player said in the report.

"We refused to pay because we hadn't done what she claimed we had done. So we went to find our own lawyers in NZ because we felt the RFU QC was interested in defending the RFU's reputation rather than ours."

The players said they had made an inappropriate joke but nothing more, The Times reported.

Elite rugby director Rob Andrew was quoted in the RFU's statement on the incident saying: "We do not believe the players had any intention to sexually harass or intimidate Ms Newton".

The chambermaid's story was published in a Sunday newspaper.

When they returned home, Haskell and Ashton were warned about their future conduct by the RFU and given suspended fines of £5,000, until December 31 2012, for breaching the squad's code of conduct. Hartley was cleared of any involvement.

The latest revelations follow the leaking of three confidential reports to The Times - including the RPA report - revealing widespread friction within the England camp.

They pointed to a squad in meltdown and leadership failings greater than even England's dismal performance suggested.

The reports gave a grim account of ill-discipline, greed, division and mismanagement in a campaign that ended in abject failure with a 19-12 quarter-final loss to France last month.