Frank Lomani lands six-week ban for red card incident

Fijian Drua halfback Frank Lomani will miss all but one of his team's remaining Super Rugby Pacific contests during the 2024 round-robin stages after being handed a hefty ban for foul play.

The 27-year-old was guilty of a shocking elbow strike to the back of Melbourne Rebels lock Josh Canham's head in the round seven matchup at AAMI Park.

He was subsequently red-carded and faced an anxious wait ahead of hearing his punishment. During the judicial process, the halfback entered an early guilty plea and was rewarded for it with a discounted suspension.

"Having conducted a detailed review of all the available evidence, including all camera angles and additional evidence, including from the player and submissions, the Foul Play Review Committee upheld the Red Card and found the Player to have contravened Law 9.12," FPRC Chairman Stephen Hardy ruled.

"The entry point for the offence was 10 weeks (assessed as Top-End range for intentional and deliberate physical abuse of striking with an elbow to the back of the victim player’s head and causing injury, where the victim player was in an incredibly vulnerable position with limited ability, if any, to defend himself).

"The Player was given a discount for entering an early guilty plea (and other relevant mitigating factors), reducing the suspension from 10 weeks to 6 weeks.  The Player is therefore suspended up to and including 26 May 2024.

“In providing the Player the Sanction, the Foul Play Review Committee emphasised that this sort of incident is not tolerated in any form of the game.”

Lomani's return will come in a home game in the final round of the regular season, awkwardly against the Rebels.

He wasn't the only Drua player to see red in the contest though, with prop Jone Koroiduadua being sent from the field after a head butt following a scrum late in the game.

A two-week suspension was deemed appropriate for the prop's foul play, with stated mitigating factors including his clean record, "limited contact with the head", and "off-field mitigating factors". Said factors reduced the suspension from its six-week entry point.

“The FPRC deemed the act of foul play merited a low-end entry point of 6 weeks primarily given that the Player and victim player were “head to head” prior to the incident, and that the Player’s head appears to have made limited contact with the head of the victim player and rather made contact with the chest area of the victim player.   There was also no injury to the victim player," Hardy said.

“The Foul Play Review Committee emphasised that had there been more forceful head contact made, the entry point may well have been higher than low-end. The entry point for the offence is 6 weeks.

"The Foul Play Review Committee applied a discount of 3 weeks for entering an early guilty plea (and other relevant mitigating factors including the Player’s otherwise unblemished disciplinary record), reducing the suspension from 6 weeks to 3 weeks.

"Further, where a matter is determined to be low-end offending, there are off-field mitigating factors, and the sanction would be wholly disproportionate to the level and type of offending involved, a sanction below 50% of the sanction may apply.

"To that end, the Foul Play Review Committee considered a sanction of 3 weeks would have been wholly disproportionate to the level and type of offending involved, and applied a further reduction of 1 week to the sanction, resulting in a total sanction of 2 weeks.”