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England No8 Sarah Beckett banned after leg-breaking croc roll tackle
By Liam Heagney
England No8 Sarah Beckett will miss the next three rounds of the Guinness Six Nations after she was given a ban for her red-carded tackle on Italy centre Michela Sillari.
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The English forward was yellow carded 11 minutes into last Sunday’s opening-round match in Parma, but her foul play was upgraded to red five minutes later following a review by the TMO bunker.
Losing a player to a sending-off so earlier in the game wasn’t pivotal as eight-try England went on to win the match 48-0.
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However, Beckett is now unavailable to John Mitchell’s side for the upcoming fixtures against Wales, Scotland and Ireland following the tackle that left the Italian midfielder with a broken leg.
A Six Nations statement read: “England No8 Sarah Beckett appeared before an independent disciplinary committee via video link having received a red card for an act of foul play contrary to Law 9.20 (d) in the match between Italy and England on March 24.
“The independent disciplinary committee consisted of Juan Pablo Spirandelli (chair, Argentina), Jamie Corsi (Wales) and Bogdan Zebega (Romania). The player admitted that she had committed an act of foul play but contended that it had not been worthy of a red card.
“However, the disciplinary committee – having considered all the available evidence and submissions from the player and her representatives – upheld the red card decision.
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“As for sanction, by applying World Rugby’s mandatory sanctioning provisions, the disciplinary committee determined that the incident warranted a mid-range entry point of six weeks suspension.
“Mitigating factors (the player’s remorse, good character and exemplary conduct at the hearing) were applied, reducing the six-week entry point by the full 50 per cent to three weeks.”
The Sarah Beckett suspension covers the following matches:
March 30 – England vs Wales, Six Nations
April 13 – Scotland vs England, Six Nations
April 20 – England vs Ireland, Six Nations
I think it is a dangerous path to go down to ban a player for the same period that a player they injured takes to recover. Players would be afraid to tackle anyone. I once tackled my best friend at school in a practice match and sprained his ankle. I paid for it by having to play fly-half instead of full-back for the rest of that season’s fixtures.
Croc rolls are not tackles. They’re a dangerous method of clearing rucks and should be banned. Which seems on the horizon given noises coming from World Rugby. Until then. Players committing croc rolls on other players have a duty of care given the high likelihood of breaking knees, legs and ankles.
What remorse? She claimed that her dangerous tackle wasn’t worthy of a red! She should be compensating the injured player for loss of earnings at the minimum. Her ban should include the recovery time of the injured player as well as the paltry 3 match ban.
What is criminal is she acts like it's no problem her actions have have cause the Italian player to lose her playing career, lose salary, if she did this in day to day life she would be in jail, she is a complete thug!!!
If your act of foul play leaves someone with a broken leg it's pretty trashy to them say that it wasn't really red card bad.
Suspensions for injuring a player through foul play should be as long they're out injured plus a penalty on top of that.
It was a stupid clumsy tackle rather than a malicious one made worse because Beckett should never have started in front of Matthews.