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Owen Farrell red card set to limit World Cup participation
By Ian Cameron
England captain Owen Farell is almost certain to miss England's Rugby World Cup opener against Argentina in Marseille in four weeks' time.
In a disastrous moment for Steve Borthwick's England, a head-high shoulder shot on Wales replacement row Taine Basham in the 62nd minute was sent for a Bunker review by referee Nika Amashukeli and it was duly upgraded to a red.
It means that with a likely three-game ban, Farrell will miss England's game warm-up games against Fiji and Ireland, and then their Rugby World Cup opener against Los Pumas.
To make matters worse, Farrell joined Ellis Genge and Freddie Steward in the sin-bin as England went down to just 12 men for a period. Steward had been carded for a reckless air challenge on Liam Williams, which saw him yellow carded and Wales' awarded a penalty try.
The card came after scrumhalf Jack van Poortvliet was carried off the pitch, throwing his Rugby World Cup participation into doubt. The Leicester scrumhalf departed with a damaged ankle following an accidental collision, while Henry Arundell was sent to the sin-bin for not retreating 10 yards.
Warren Gatland's Wales didn't fare much better. Captain Dewi Lake hobbled off to add to Gatland’s injury concerns at hooker.
In the second half Taine Plumtree was next to depart for the stands nursing an injury as play continued to be marred by error after error for both sides.
additional reporting PA
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Latest Comments
Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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