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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.
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.
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.
“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
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After a fairly simple Pac4, the BFs will find out a lot about themselves in September when they face the rampaging RedRoses at Twickenham in front of a record crowd. After that they will face them again in Canada in WXV1. They also have France to contend with. Will be interesting to see what Australia have to offer with Jo Yapp at the helm.
Go to commentsSuper Rugby Pacific has been better as a spectacle due to the emphasis on speeding the game up and I’d look at taking things a step further. Instead of giving teams 90 seconds to take a conversion, let’s bring that down 60 seconds. You could also look at allowing 45 seconds for a penalty goal. Maybe teams could get 20 seconds instead of 30 to form a scrum before the ref then starts the engagement process. However, this year the most pleasing change is the added competitiveness in the Trans Tasman matches. What does frustrate me is how the rugby media in Australasia allow the the whole ‘‘rugby is boring’’/’’rugby yawnion’’ narrative to take hold from from vindictive league types, the chairman of the ARL commission and News Limited Australia. Stick up for the game and shift the narrative!
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