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'He's gone' - Tearful Beno Obano costs Bath with moment of madness
By Neil Fissler
Beno Obano will take an unwanted place in the history books after being only the second player to be sent off for a high tackle for his moment of madness at Twickenham.
The Bath loosehead was shown a straight red card after 22 minutes by referee Christophe Ridley for a high tackle on Northampton Saints No.8 Juarno Augustus.
Obano, Maro Itoje's cousin, was left to sit in stunned disbelief, tears following his checks after Ridley was given little option.
He had been in the running for a place on England’s summer tour to Japan and New Zealand, but any suspension is likely to rule him off the plane this week.
Ironically, the first player sent off in a Premiership Final was Northampton’s Dylan Hartley, who was dismissed in 2013 for allegedly swearing at referee Wayne Barnes.
🟥 Red card for Beno Obano after 21 minutes pic.twitter.com/RNOmzdLdGc
— Rugby on TNT Sports (@rugbyontnt) June 8, 2024
Hartley’s red card against Leicester Tigers proved costly, as it saw him miss the Lions' tour to Australia that summer.
He told the RugbyPass offload show in 2020 that he almost wanted a taxi to take him home from Twickenham at half-time.
“When he [Barnes] sent me off, it was a moment of disbelief, actually. I couldn’t believe what was happening. It almost went like slow motion, like the whole world was ending. “Yellow cards are alright because you just jog off and know you’re going to come back on, hopefully. But red cards, it’s the slowest walk of your life.
“I knew the impact that that had. It was Northampton’s first-ever final in the Premiership, it was against our rivals Leicester. That season had been perfect for us. We were flying.
“I let down not only the team but the town. It was a pretty long walk of shame. I went straight to the changing rooms and had a moment with myself.
“I thought the easy thing to do here is to sit in. I felt like getting a taxi home, out the fire escape kind of thing,” he said.
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Latest Comments
That's really stupidly pedantic. Let's say the gods had smiled on us, and we were playing Ireland in Belfast on this trip. Then you'd be happy to accept it as a tour of the UK. But they're not going to Australia, or Peru, or the Philippines, they're going to the UK. If they had a match in Paris it would be fair to call it the "end-of-year European tour". I think your issue has less to do with the definition of the United Kingdom, and is more about what is meant by the word "tour". By your definition of the word, a road trip starting in Marseilles, tootling through the Massif Central and cruising down to pop in at La Rochelle, then heading north to Cherbourg, moving along the coast to imagine what it was like on the beach at Dunkirk, cutting east to Strasbourg and ending in Lyon cannot be called a "tour of France" because there's no visit to St. Tropez, or the Louvre, or Martinique in the Caribbean.
Go to commentsJust thought for a moment you might have gathered some commonsense from a southerner or a NZer and shut up. But no, idiots aren't smart enough to realise they are idiots.
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