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Six Nations statement: Committee, date named for Billy Vunipola hearing
By Liam Heagney
England are facing a very busy Tuesday on the independent disciplinary hearing front as the case for the red card brandished to Billy Vunipola on Saturday in Dublin will be heard in the evening after the appeal in the Owen Farrell case.
A Six Nations statement read: “England No8 Billy Vunipola will attend an independent disciplinary hearing after he received a red card for an act of foul play contrary to law 9.13 (a player must not tackle an opponent early, late or dangerously) in the Summer Nations Series match between Ireland and England on Saturday, August 19.
“The player will attend a hearing via video conference before an independent judicial committee consisting of Roddy Dunlop KC (chairman, Scotland), joined by former international coach Frank Hadden (Scotland) and former international Jamie Corsi (Wales). The hearing will take place on Tuesday evening, August 22.”
Vunipola was yellow-carded on 53 minutes in Dublin for his collision with Ireland's Andrew Porter, a sanction upgraded some minutes later to a red card following a TMO bunker review.
England boss Steve Borthwick said post-game: “I’m not going to comment upon the incident specifically because it goes into a disciplinary process this coming week.
“Hopefully we will find a conclusion on both matters this week and it won’t go into another week. Once I have all the facts, I will deal with them.
“We talked about the way this Test week was disrupted (by the Farrell situation) and I need to adapt throughout the week. It’s another challenge that has been thrown at us.”
It was Tuesday last week when England skipper Farrell was cleared to play with immediate effect after the red card received in the August 12 match against Wales was rescinded.
An all-Australian independent judiciary of Adam Casselden (SC, chair) and two former Wallaby players, John Langford and David Croft decided to downgrade the Farrell tackle on Taine Basham to a yellow card offence.
However, World Rugby last Thursday exercised its right to appeal the decision and this will be heard this Tuesday by a committee consisting of Nigel Hampton KC (chair, New Zealand), joined by Shao-ing Wang (Singapore) and Donal Courtney (Ireland).
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Latest Comments
Yeah I actually think it was Havili that took it off him. Not bad himself, but on the advice of Razor, who didn't even pursue it and use Havili on a split bench as 10 cover?
One huge cluster#$@% but I think you could be right, I liked O'Connor when he won at the Reds and I've just got a funny feeling he's going to dominate Super Rugby, kinda like how Cooper came back to the Wallabies as an experienced head and spat out South Africa. I think James could do the same with the Blues and other Aus sides. I'd really love Rivez to get a lot of minutes though.
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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