Quade Cooper's penalty exposes system
Quade Cooper's penalty exposes system
* Wayne Smith
* From: The Australian
* July 26, 2010 12:00AM
THE Wallabies are certain to appeal Quade Cooper's two-week suspension as serious flaws began to emerge in SANZAR's judicial system.
The exclamation "Two weeks" from teammates Will Genia and Matt Giteau, when they learned of the sentence handed down by SANZAR judicial officer Bruce Squire QC, summed up the Wallabies' dismay that they would have to play the All Blacks in Melbourne and Christchurch over the next two Saturdays without their unpredictable playmaker.
New Zealander Squire put Cooper out of both Bledisloe Tests after finding him guilty of a dangerous tackle when he upended Springboks counterpart Morne Steyn in the 54th minute of Saturday's Test at Suncorp Stadium.
In doing so, he compared Cooper's offence to the spear tackle that earned Bok winger Jean de Villiers a two-week suspension following the recent Tri-Nations Test in Wellington.
"This is consistent application in terms of like penalties for like offences," Squires said in a SANZAR press release yesterday.
But while the offences may have been similar, the penalties were not, at least in Australian eyes.
De Villiers only missed one Tri-Nations Test, in Brisbane, while South African teammate Jaque Fourie, who also was found guilty of a similar breach of law 10.4 (j) yesterday for a spear tackle on Richard Brown, also will miss only the August 21 Tri-Nations Test against the All Blacks.
While Fourie might have been suspended for four weeks - with Squire taking into account that he had been found guilty of a similar offence last year - it is ludicrous that his penalty supposedly also covers two Currie Cup matches.
In all probability, Fourie would have missed both matches anyway to rest for the second half of the Springboks' Tri-Nations campaign.
Either way, the reality is that Cooper has been hit with a two-Test ban while the South Africans, because of the scheduling of their Tri-Nations fixtures, will sit out only one, which seems a perverse outcome given SANZAR's stated commitment to achieving consistency in the judiciary room.
Yet perhaps the more serious question is whether Cooper and Fourie should even have been cited in the first instance by citing commissioner Steve Hinds, of New Zealand.
Both on-field incidents were reported to Irish referee George Clancy by assistant referee Keith Brown, of New Zealand, who, when asked by Clancy for his recommendation, replied: "Yellow card."
Under SANZAR guidelines, however, a player should only be cited if in the opinion of the citing commissioner the offence has reached the threshold of a red-card - that is, a send-off - offence.
Both incidents in the Brisbane Test were seen by the assistant referee and reported as nothing more than yellow-card offences, which means either the match officials got their rulings wrong or Hinds did.
IRB referees boss Paddy O'Brien could not be contacted for comment yesterday.
Certainly, it makes sense for the Wallabies to appeal against Cooper's suspension. The only reason not to would be the fear that his penalty would be increased but the Wallabies have a three-week break between the August 7 Test in Christchurch and their next Tri-Nations fixture, against the Boks in Pretoria on August 28.
Even if his suspension was increased, the only impact would be that he would miss a Brisbane Premier Rugby fixture for Souths - again, a match he most likely would not have played anyway.
The judiciary outcome cast a pall over what was otherwise a happy, if still restrained, Wallabies camp yesterday.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1225896771563