‘Yellow card would have been appropriate’: URC’s Henning weighs in on Fourie, Hooker incidents
· Citizen
The URC’s head of match officials, Tappe Henning, believes the yellow card upgraded to a 20-minute red for Iain Henderson’s crocodile roll on Deon Fourie was appropriate.
However, he would not weigh in on Henderson’s three-match ban, which some fans thought was lenient, because it was imposed by an independent disciplinary committee autonomous from the United Rugby Championship officials.
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Meanwhile, Springbok flanker Fourie, at 39, may not return from the long-term injury.
Henning did, however, clarify why nothing appeared to come out of the incident where Ospreys wing Luke Morgan dove on top of Sharks and Springbok wing Ethan Hooker after he had scored a try, causing a shoulder injury that kept him out of action since April and is expected to cause him to miss the Nations Championship Tests against England, Scotland and Wales in July.
Henning was speaking to media from various URC nations in an hour-long roundtable on Tuesday ahead of the URC play-offs.
Iain Henderson about to perform a crocodile roll on Deon Fourie that injured Fourie and earned him a yellow card upgraded to a 20-minute red. Picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile via Getty Images‘Diving onto a player is unacceptable’
Henning described how the independent TMO introduced this season had been a success, allowing TMO officials to access camera angles independently.
It cut the time taken to make decisions from 1 minute, 40 seconds to 1 minute, 33 seconds in the last six rounds. Decision accuracy also climbed from 85% to 92%.
Henning said he would be meeting with the URC’s match officials ahead of the play-offs to make sure everyone was aligned on important matters of the game.
Answering questions around specific incidents, he said that Morgan should have received a yellow card for his foul play on Hooker.
“It was agreed by the selectors group and shared with the match officials that we expected them to review, and a yellow card would have been an appropriate sanction for that action, as the player was late in trying to defend his goal line and diving onto a player is unacceptable,” Henning said.
The onus was on the citing commissioner, independent from match officials, to bring the incident to a disciplinary committee if it met a red card threshold. It didn’t, and so nothing appeared to have been done about it either during the game or afterwards.
Hooker, Fourie incidents explained
On Fourie’s incident, Henning said the length of Henderson’s ban (six weeks reduced to three for mitigation) was entirely out of the match officials’ hands.
“The disciplinary process is an absolutely independent process, even independent from the URC. It is not a URC decision. Even the citing process is independent.
“We as match officials do our job as best we can on the field and we show respect to the disciplinary process that follows afterwards.
“And we accept those processes are done by professional people who have been around for a long time. And we respect the outcome without questioning or querying it or making comments about a decision.”
He said referee Andrea Piardi had taken “appropriate action” by presenting a yellow card under review for a red.