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McFadden's stop-start season now faces a citing headache ahead of European decider
By Online Editors
Fergus McFadden’s stop-start season is set for another potential lay-off after the Leinster back was cited for an incident in his team’s PRO14 loss at Ulster last Saturday.
The 32-year-old hasn’t featured in any of Leinster’s eight matches on route to the May 11 Champions Cup final versus Saracens, but he won’t even feature in a selection debate for Newcastle if he is banned following what happened at Kingspan Stadium.
A disciplinary committee has been appointed to meet on Wednesday to consider the citing complaint that refers to an incident involving Ulster’s No8 Sean Reidy in the 13th minute of the round 21 league fixture in Belfast.
The player has been reported by the citing commissioner in charge for infringement of Law 9.12 (A player must not physically abuse anyone) - Striking with the head.
Only recently back in action following his latest injury, McFadden has featured in five of Leinster’s last six PRO14 matches as a starter.
However, he failed to make the cut in his province’s European knockout stage matches, Leo Cullen deciding to start Adam Byrne and Dave Kearney on the wing versus Ulster in the quarter-finals and then opt for Jordan Larmour and James Lowe in the semi-final against Toulouse.
McFadden has played in Leinster’s European final wins in 2011 and 2012, but he missed last year’s decider against Racing 92 in Bilbao following an injury suffered in the semi-final win over Scarlets in Dublin.
A ban could also see McFadden miss the run-in to Leinster’s PRO14 title defence, which starts with a May 18 semi-final at the RDS versus the winners of next Saturday’s semi-final in Limerick between Munster and Treviso.
It was only a matter of weeks ago that McFadden was on the receiving end of a head strike as Cheetahs prop Ox Nche was banned for eight weeks.
The South African was yellow carded at the time, but was subsequently cited for striking McFadden with the shoulder.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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