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England prop Joe Marler set to complete suspension without missing a match
By Online Editors
England prop Joe Marler will complete his 10-week ban from rugby without missing a match due to the coronavirus shutdown.
Marler was handed the suspension on March 12 after being found guilty of grabbing Wales captain Alun Wyn Jones by the genitals during England’s stormy 33-30 win in the Guinness Six Nations.
Under World Rugby guidelines, each week of a ban should correspond to a match, with Marler’s suspension set to cover a 12-week period during which the Harlequins player had been due to play 10 times.
The ban expires on June 7 and that time frame will not change despite the suspension in play due to the pandemic having wiped out the fixtures which Marler was due to miss.
The Gallagher Premiership will not resume before June 27 at the earliest.
England centre Manu Tuilagi has already completed a four-week ban for a dangerous tackle on George North in the same game. That ban expired on April 14.
It had been previously reported that Marler was weighing up the prospect of retirement with immediate effect after he received widespread criticism on social media for his indiscretion.
That led him to temporarily suspend his Twitter and Instagram accounts, although both accounts are now active again.
- Press Association
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Latest Comments
Finau is definitely operating on razor thin margins. He hasn’t done anything wrong… yet. But a player going into contact 6 inches lower than he is expecting, without him even knowing, will end in disaster. You can imagine a situation where the pass dies on Edmed and he has to bend down a little lower to catch it at the last second. Finau’s hit would have been catastrophic. The margins are just too fine. He needs to study how PSDT, at 6’7”, manages to drop his tackle height and exert just as much force with close zero danger of taking someone’s head off. Given how poorly NZ has adapted to lower their tackle height, and that this issue which has plagued the ABs for years and played a big part in them not winning the World Cup, I thought NZR and all SR coaches would be prioritising sorting this issue out. If I was Razor I would be on the phone to Clayton MacMillan and Samipeni Finau saying exactly that. Finau is a monster and shaping up to be the closest thing to Kaino since Kaino, but I wouldn’t risk selecting him for the ABs at the moment.
Go to commentsThe surprising stat I saw in the Blues game when showing Sotutu equaling the Blues forwards record was that Akira has not scored a try since 2019. Now my memory is pretty bad when it comes to those sorts of the things, I can remember his AB try though, but anyway I can’t see I can remember his last blues touchdown or any in recent years. Surely that still has to be a bogus stat. Maybe excludes SRA games?
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