Leinster pair banned for punching

juvenal

Jennings and Fogarty have both been banned as a result of incidents in the match against Connaght.

The Irish Times wrote:

Leinster will be without Shane Jennings for three games and John Fogarty will miss Saturday's home Magners League clash against Cardiff Blues, after both were suspended for punching following disciplinary hearings this afternoon.


Jennings has been banned for three weeks until January 28th and will miss the game against the Blues and the Heineken Cup meetings with London Wasps and Edinburgh.


Fogarty received a one-week suspension from today that ends at midnight on the 13th. Both were cited under under law 10.4 (a) by the independent commissioner who was present at last weekend's win over Connacht at the RDS.


Munster's Federico Pucciarello will be available to Tony McGahan despite being found guilty of kicking in the defeat to Ulster at Thomond Park. The prop's offence was found not to have warranted a red card and he is free to play.

Certainly Jennings is a loss for the remaining HEC pool games, but hopefully the likes of O'Brien etc can step up and fill the gap.

Also good to see Leo Cullen is back in the squad for the weekend's match against the Blues.

themont85

Jeez i though Fogarty was worse than Jennings at the time. Anyway O'Brien is a more than adequate replacment.

dave13

A one match ban for Fogarty is extremely lenient as he got off about 10 punches on the guy lying on the ground. More to do with Jackman being possibly unavailable for the Wasps game than anything else I think.
Am a leinster fan but really didn't expect Fogarty to be travelling to London.
What did Jennings do that warranted a 3 match ban? For it to be 3 times worse than Fogarty's he's need to have pulled a knife out.

Sangre

whens backman jack?

crisco10

Ares wrote: »

What did Jennings do that warranted a 3 match ban? For it to be 3 times worse than Fogarty's he's need to have pulled a knife out.

This is what I would love to know!!

Robbo

Very charitable to Fogarty all things considered.

Zzippy

Ares wrote: »

A one match ban for Fogarty is extremely lenient as he got off about 10 punches on the guy lying on the ground. More to do with Jackman being possibly unavailable for the Wasps game than anything else I think.
Am a leinster fan but really didn't expect Fogarty to be travelling to London.
What did Jennings do that warranted a 3 match ban? For it to be 3 times worse than Fogarty's he's need to have pulled a knife out.

Yep, very lenient, a joke in fact. Blatantly obvious its because Leinster would have a problem at hooker if he was banned for longer.

Saw the Jennings incident on TV3 news last night, it was a punch from behind on Keatley after he had passed the ball, a pretty dirty blow, but not sure how much damage he did as Keatley didn't go down injured. Still, hitting someone from behind when they are unaware of your presence is pretty bad.

Robbo

Zzippy wrote: »

Saw the Jennings incident on TV3 news last night, it was a punch from behind on Keatley after he had passed the ball, a pretty dirty blow, but not sure how much damage he did as Keatley didn't go down injured. Still, hitting someone from behind when they are unaware of your presence is pretty bad.

They'll have some job trying to lure Keatley back to Leinster, wasn't it Cullen who got in a similar cheap dig at him in the Sportsground back in October?

Zzippy

Robbo wrote: »

They'll have some job trying to lure Keatley back to Leinster, wasn't it Cullen who got in a similar cheap dig at him in the Sportsground back in October?

Yup, and not even cited. Targeting a young player like that is pretty poor form, especially when he's an ex-teammate and possibly a future one too. Ah sure look on the bright side, if they take him back they'll probably give us Sexton :rolleyes:

Robbo

Zzippy wrote: »

Yup, and not even cited. Targeting a young player like that is pretty poor form, especially when he's an ex-teammate and possibly a future one too. Ah sure look on the bright side, if they take him back they'll probably give us Sexton :rolleyes:

In fairness, we did inflict Chris Keane on them...

Amazotheamazing

Considering Keatley has made it clear he won't go back to Leinster until there's a regime change, perhaps it's no co-incidence he's being targetted for special treatment.

Tbf to Fogarty, it was decided he was acting in retaliation to an earlier incident.

Zzippy

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

Considering Keatley has made it clear he won't go back to Leinster until there's a regime change, perhaps it's no co-incidence he's being targetted for special treatment.

Tbf to Fogarty, it was decided he was acting in retaliation to an earlier incident.

Is that supposed to excuse it? "Ooh, he said a bad thing about our coach, we have to go and do him now..." :rolleyes:

And re Fogarty, there's retaliating, and there's punching the head off someone who's on the ground and not in a position to defend themselves.

Amazotheamazing

Bunch of clowns,the two of them.

As for keatley,well yeah cullen did hit him aswell.If jennings targetted him aswell hes probably not a very liked person.

Probably did or said something when leaving,we will never no.

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

Considering Keatley has made it clear he won't go back to Leinster until there's a regime change, perhaps it's no co-incidence he's being targetted for special treatment.

Link?

Didnt Cheika said at the start of his tenure he would only stay for a set amount of years and I think this is his last?
Could be wrong though.

Podge_irl

I think Cheika has one more year and then he is off for good.

Jennings is gonna feel pretty stupid about his completely unnecessary punch if he ends up losing his place to O'Brien - which is distinctly possible is O'Brien puts in a string of the kind of performances he is well capable of doing.

juvenal

I didn't see any footage from the game, so I'm only going on what I read in the match thread and here. It sounds like Fogarty was the worse of the two offenders, so I fail to see why he received the lighter punishment.

If it's because of his position and Leinster's lack of depth there at the moment, then it makes an absolute farce of the disciplinary process.:mad:

juvenal

juvenal wrote: »

I didn't see any footage from the game, so I'm only going on what I read in the match thread and here. It sounds like Fogarty was the worse of the two offenders, so I fail to see why he received the lighter punishment.

If it's because of his position and Leinster's lack of depth there at the moment, then it makes an absolute farce of the disciplinary process.:mad:

I would say that had something to do with it,although he probably had a good excuse.

According to leinsterfans they saw jennings punch someone and then knock him out cold with a closeline or punch from behind style thing.So he had no defence at all.

According to Zzippy on here it was keatley but he didnt even get injured and got back up.

On Leinsterfans no one mentioned Keatley at all but they said the person was knocked out cold, so I have my doubts it was even him tbh.

A 27 year old man is unlikely to hit a 21 yr old kid who he played with imo,even though cullen did before

Zzippy

Terry Sharp Oats wrote: »

I would say that had something to do with it,although he probably had a good excuse.

According to leinsterfans they saw jennings punch someone and then knock him out cold with a closeline or punch from behind style thing.So he had no defence at all.

According to Zzippy on here it was keatley but he didnt even get injured and got back up.

On Leinsterfans no one mentioned Keatley at all but they said the person was knocked out cold, so I have my doubts it was even him tbh.

A 27 year old man is unlikely to hit a 21 yr old kid who he played with imo,even though cullen did before

I only saw it the once on news and it looked like Keatley, it was definitely the first receiver anyway who was struck once he passed the ball. Don't know about anyone being knocked out cold though, I was at the game and would have remembered that happening.

Diom

Was at the game, my friend beside me saw the Jennings assault. The player he attacked was at the very least knocked to the ground and stayed down for a good while (perhaps 30 secs). It seems a very cowardly thing to do. Jennings was frustrated at himself maybe and saw Murphy/Keatley as a soft target?

juvenal

Any links/video footage online?

Shelflife

Fogarty was reacting to him being injured when the scrum collapsed and it looked as if fogarty wasnt happy.

the next scrum went down and fogarty took his opportunity to hit 10 -12 times a man that was in no position to defend himself, it was a cowardly act and has no place on the rugby pitch.

to subsequently use and accept the excuse that "ahh sure he annoyed me" sends out a terrible message to anyone watching.

where two players tear into each other but both can defend themselves then i could understand a slap on the wrists to both players. but to only hit fogarty with a 1 match ban for what was a cowardly , sly and complete act of thuggery is a complete cop out by the authorities.

what would the situation have been if he did the damage that he intended to do? broken jaw?, nose ? cheekbone? to try and inflict injury on a fellow professional is the lowest of the low.

Apperantly the closeline was on frank murphy and then the punches were someone else,probably came over to defend Murphy.

On a separate note frank Murphy is a little **** and deserved nothing less.Im sick of seeing him doing nasty little things off the ball against opposition players.He is quite the little hard man and I would say he did something to provoke jennings.

Spore

Sangre wrote: »

whens backman jack?

beautiful spoonerism dude! He's had knee surgery, still recovering though apparently walking. Might be back for the Wasps game.

Trojan

Shelflife wrote: »

Fogarty was reacting to him being injured when the scrum collapsed and it looked as if fogarty wasnt happy.

the next scrum went down and fogarty took his opportunity to hit 10 -12 times a man that was in no position to defend himself, it was a cowardly act and has no place on the rugby pitch.

to subsequently use and accept the excuse that "ahh sure he annoyed me" sends out a terrible message to anyone watching.

As a front row player, if I was injured because the opposition repeatedly pulled down the scrum, and then the referee added insult to injury by penalising my team every time the opposition did so, then I think I would be in a very dangerous mood[*]. Pulling down the scrum repeatedly is a very serious offense, and from what I could see, the Connacht loosehead did this many times when the referee switched[*] to the TH side. (I could only see the LH side during the first half when it went down).

I was at the match and didn't see the punching incident clearly - my initial reaction from a team point of view was that it was the best thing to do in light of the extremely poor refereeing[*] of the scrum - sometimes it is necessary to take the law into your own hands when the referee refuses to protect you.

Afterwards, when I saw the incident on TV, I agree that Fogarty was extreme and deserved a much longer ban. However, I still don't think the Leinster players were wrong to take the law into their own hands.

* Note: that was the worst refereeing of the scrum I've ever seen in the ML, and the worst refereeing in general since the Chenglings retired.

Paulw

Trojan wrote: »

* Note: that was the worst refereeing of the scrum I've ever seen in the ML, and the worst refereeing in general

I have to totally agree with you there. The lack of control of the scrum, by the ref, caused most of the problems in the game.

It's a shame that the ref can't be cited for his decisions.

RugbyFanatic

I'm still looking for a clip of the inciddent as I missed the game if anyone can find one for me it would be much appreciated.

Diom

Trojan wrote: »

As a front row player, if I was injured because the opposition repeatedly pulled down the scrum, and then the referee added insult to injury by penalising my team every time the opposition did so, then I think I would be in a very dangerous mood[*]. Pulling down the scrum repeatedly is a very serious offense, and from what I could see, the Connacht loosehead did this many times when the referee switched[*] to the TH side. (I could only see the LH side during the first half when it went down).

I was at the match and didn't see the punching incident clearly - my initial reaction from a team point of view was that it was the best thing to do in light of the extremely poor refereeing[*] of the scrum - sometimes it is necessary to take the law into your own hands when the referee refuses to protect you.

Afterwards, when I saw the incident on TV, I agree that Fogarty was extreme and deserved a much longer ban. However, I still don't think the Leinster players were wrong to take the law into their own hands.

* Note: that was the worst refereeing of the scrum I've ever seen in the ML, and the worst refereeing in general since the Chenglings retired.

What are you talking about! The problem was that Wright was hooking his arm in under the scrum, and refusing to allow the Connacht player to bind correctly. The hit would come, the bind was taken by Connacht, but when he went to bind wright was already pulling his elbow down. The ref was utterly useless, agreed, but to blame the Connacht props for the entire shambles is ridiculous.

TarfHead

Liam Toland makes some good points about this aspect of the game in his Irish Times column.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2009/0109/1231406004400.html

It's in the interests of the team to keep the messing out of scrums. Was Wright motivated by the needs to the team (quick ball to the back line) or some mana-a-mano tussle with Lyne ?