Baa-Baas bad boys banned for breaching protocol
THIRTEEN Barbarians players have been given bans by the RFU for their part in October’s game against England having to be cancelled.
The players breached coronavirus protocols and the cancellation of the match cost the RFU about £500,00 in lost broadcast and sponsorship revenue.
All players accepted the charges.
Chris Robshaw, Alex Lewington, Fergus McFadden, Juan Pablo Socino, Richard Wigglesworth and Jackson Wray will all serve four weeks suspensions.
They were all part of a group who left the team “bubble” twice and were found to have misled the investigation.
They were initially given ten-week bans, but those were reduced to five weeks “as a result of their timely acceptance of culpability and the players’ other mitigation”, of which three weeks are suspended subject to there being no further off-field offending by the players for one year.
Lewington, Robshaw, Wigglesworth and Wray must also conduct 50 hours of unpaid rugby community work, while that figure is 60 hours for McFadden and Socino.
However, all six received another two-week suspension for giving a false account. All bar McFadden have also been fined two weeks’ wages.
“The sanctions reflect the seriousness of the charges which include behaving in a way that ignored what the public at large and the rugby community were complying with and deliberately compromising an investigation being carried out by the RFU as swiftly as the circumstances demanded,” the governing body said in a statement.
Calum Clark, Sean Maitland and Tim Swinson all received a four-week ban – three of which are suspended – Tom de Glanville, Joel Kpoku and Manu Vunipola were given threeweek suspensions, and Simon Kerrod got a twoweek ban.
The panel said it drew a line in the seriousness of offending between those who went out on both nights and gave a false account, those who went out only on Wednesday night and gave a false account and Kerrod, who was the only player who only went out on Tuesday night and did not provide a false account.