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Bastareaud banned for hit 'bordering on assault'
By Online Editors
Toulon captain Mathieu Bastareaud appeared this evening before the commission of the National League of Rugby.
The centre was sent off after lashing out at Castres lock Christophe Samson during their Top 14 match last Sunday. The Toulon man hit Samson across the head with his forearm, earning him a straight red card in the process.
It happened in the 69th minute with Samson lying on the ground, with one commentator describing it as “bordering on assault”.
He was banned for 5 weeks and should be reunited with his teammates for the Edinburgh / RCT European Cup match on Saturday 20th October.
It’s not the first time that Bastareaud has been in trouble with the authorities, most recently in January when he picked up a three week ban for using a homophobic slur during a Champions Cup match against Benetton Rugby at Stade Félix Mayol.
He missed France’s opening game of the 2018 Natwest Six Nations against Ireland as a result.
Bastareaud was cited by the match Citing Commissioner, Dennis Jones for verbally abusing the Benetton Rugby flanker, Sebastian Negri Da Oleggio, in the 80th minute of the match in contravention of Law 9.12.
The ref mic picked up Bastareaud calling Negri a ‘f***ing f****t’ which caused a storm of criticism for the player.
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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