SCRUM’S THE WORD

ENGLAND centre Piers Francis has escaped a ban for a high shot on Will Hooley following a disciplinary hearing in tokyo.

the panel deemed the collision not to be worthy of a red card, meaning he is free to play against argentina on saturday.

Officials missed the collision in real-time but there was a retrospective citing as World Rugby clampdown on foul play.

Eddie Jones said England would accept any sanction that came their way — and Francis admitted to an act of foul play but denied that it reached the red-card threshold.

the committee judgement said: ‘Having considered all the angles of the incident, together with evidence from the player and submissions from his legal counsel, the panel determined that the act ought to have resulted in a yellow card on-field.’ SCOTLAND winger Sean Maitland spent Saturday night with his cousin, controversial Australian playmaker Quade Cooper. The pair met up in Kobe, which is a 30-minute train ride from Cooper’s new home in Osaka. Cooper has been exiled from the Wallabies set-up and currently plays for the Kintetsu Liners.

MANIC STREET PREACHERS frontman James Dean Bradfield surprised Wales followers with an impromptu gig in the fan zone on Friday night. Bradfield is a huge

Wales fan and invited Jamie Roberts, the guitar-playing centre, on stage for a cameo performance. JAPAN captain Michael Leitch was in such demand after the Ireland victory that a box was required to hold all of the media’s recording devices in the mixed zone (right).

Japan’s newspapers went crazy for the titanic victory in shizuoka. For the first time since the Brave Blossoms beat south africa in Brighton in 2015, rugby was on every national front page — a total circulation of over 50million.