Rugby’s most
no less, that a yellow card would be sufficient for the degree of danger to which Warburton had subjected Clerc.
But referee Alain Rolland brandished the red card, much to the dismay of many onlookers, which meant Wales had a man disadvantage for more than an hour.
France won the match by a single point, 9-8, and it meant Wales missed out on a golden opportunity to earn a spot in their first Rugby World Cup final, a feat they are still yet to achieve.
DUNCAN McRAE RAINS DOWN FISTS ON RONAN O’GARA ANOTHER Lions tour, another ugly, violent incident.
When the Lions met the Warratahs back in 2001, the red mist seemed to descend over Duncan McRae.
He rained down 11 punches to the head of Ireland fly-half Ronan O’Gara, when the Lions man was grounded following a ruck, leaving his face bulbous and bloodied and fans wincing at their TV screens.
O’Gara, dazed and wounded, trudged off the field with his eye crimsoned with blood. McRae, meanwhile, rightly saw the crimson of the referee’s card as he was given his marching orders.
The Waratahs full-back was slapped with a seven-week ban for the incident. He was rumoured to have received death threats from the Irish public and was subjected to fiery public confrontations when he was spotted in the streets thereafter.
O’Gara’s eye, initially swollen closed, required eight stitches. Then Lions coach Graham Henry branded the incident “a bad day for rugby”.
SCHALK BURGER EYE GOUGE
IT is arguably one of the most sickening videos of our time. Certainly not a watch for the faint-hearted.
It is yet another uneasy incident which sits among the many on recent Lions tours, this time the trip to South Africa in 2009.
Schalk Burger was the perpetrator this time, in the first minute of the second Test in Pretoria, when he gouged Irish winger Luke Fitzgerald in plain sight on the fringes of a ruck.
The biggest bone of contention was that Burger received only a yellow card for the act, from which Fitzgerald later complained of blurred vision.
The Springboks emerged victorious by virtue of a last-minute penalty from Morne Steyn, from 54 metres, to seal a series win for the hosts.
But it was marred by that horrendous incident, which Burger later claimed was never intentional, issuing no apology to Fitzgerald.
NIGEL OWENS SENDS OFF MONTGOMERY FOR ASSAULTING REFEREE
FORMER Springbok Percy Montgomery was hit with a hefty two-year ban and £15,000 after Nigel Owens sent him off for shoving touch judge Peter Rees back in 2003.
Montgomery, playing for Newport at the time, took umbrage with Rees during the game against Swansea at St. Helen’s, and was ultimately found guilty of ‘assaulting a match official.’ The fallout, though, was ugly. Eighteen months of the ban was suspended, meaning only six months of actual game time would be missed by the full-back, and the Welsh referees’ society reacted with fury at the leniency of his punishment.
As a consequence, Montgomery missed the 2003 Rugby World Cup with South Africa owing to the ban.