Andrew Flintoff in the soup again

With only a week to go before the Ashes series against Australia begins, England's favourite bad boy cricketer Andrew Flintoff is already in trouble. He has been disciplined for failing to show up on Saturday morning for a team-building coach trip to the World War One trenches at Ypres. "He's very aware he's stuffed up," said his captain, Andrew Strauss.

England team bosses have done nothing to quell the speculation that 'Freddie' Flintoff missed the 8.10 am coach because he had drunk too much at a team dinner the night before.

Asked whether Flintoff had been drinking, Hugh Morris, managing director of the England team, refused to deny it. He said: "The issue is that he missed the bus on Saturday morning and that the issue has been dealt with."

Strauss said: "We had a team dinner the night before and alcohol wasn't banned." Asked specifically about Flintoff's well-known history with booze, he said: "I don't know. That's something for him to answer. I think it is something he has been working very hard on. I think he generally recognises when is the time to drink and the time not to drink; it is important career-wise he stays on the right side of that and the vast majority of the time I think he has done."

Flintoff, 31, has considerable form in this area. During the 2006-07 Ashes tour of Australia, when he was captain, he turned up the worse for wear to a training session in Sydney. Most famously, he got drunk following a defeat by New Zealand in the 2007 World Cup and commandeered a pedalo in St Lucia which he then capsized. He was stripped of the vice-captaincy for that.

Former England captain Michael Atherton, writing in the Times today, said the latest incident was an unwanted distraction. "Andrew Flintoff is back and the talk, once again, is not of cricket but of discipline, time-keeping and alcohol."

However, he said it would soon be forgotten if Flintoff helped England regain the Ashes. "Does it matter at all? That all depends on results."