Shock as Castres hooker gets away with lenient ban for heinous clear-out
Castres hooker Marc-Antoine Rallier can consider himself a very lucky player after only coming away with a three-week ban for a heinous clear-out on Racing 92’s Antonie Claassen.
In the most recent round of Top 14 action, the 31-year-old saw red for a hit that was simply despicable in the modern game and No8 Claassen was fortunate he did not suffer a serious injury.
The disciplinary commission handed Rallier the ban on Wednesday, which is extraordinarily short given how reckless the collision was.
Not only was this a shoulder charge, as the hooker clearly made no attempt to wrap his arms, but it was to the back of his opponent’s head and neck. Claassen had no opportunity to brace himself after making the tackle, as he was blindsided by Rallier.
This was the offence, as shared by Tom May on Twitter:
While there have been complaints in recent times about how frivolously referees hand out cards, this was inexcusable and a three-week suspension is very lenient from the Ligue Nationale de Rugby.
The point of banning a player is partly to punish them, but also to serve as a deterrent to other players doing the same in future.
A three-week ban does not correlate to how dangerous Rallier’s challenge was. French rugby, who this week handed centre Geoffrey Doumayrou a five-week suspended ban and a €1,000 fine feigning injury, must surely have to look into making bans for tackles like Rallier's more severe in future.
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Latest Comments
I think we need to get innovative with the new laws.
Now red cards are only 20 minutes, Razor should send Finau on a head hunting mission to hospitalise their 10 with a shoulder to the chops.
Give the conspiracy theorists a win.
England played well enough to win but couldnt score when they needed to and couldnt defend a couple of X-Factor moments from Telea which was ultimately the difference. They needed to hold the ball more and make the AB's make more tackles. Territorially they were good for the first 60. Defending their lead and playing pragmatic rugby in the last 20 was silly. The AB's always had the potential to come back. England still have a long way to go, definite progress would have been shown had they won but it seems they are still stuck where they were shortly after the six nations and their tour to NZ
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