Mon 20 Nov 2017 | 02:33
French centre goes unpunished after doing this to lucky Springbok

4
Comments

French centre Geoffrey Doumayrou should be taking out a lottery ticket after Saturday's match in Paris. While the home side narrowly lost 18-17 to South Africa, it could have been worse if the officials had spotted what he did to Francois Venter off the ball.

Neither referee Nigel Owens nor his assistants spotted the incident, but it was quite clear to see Doumayrou grab Venter between the legs and lift him past the horizontal, before tossing him to the floor, where he landed on as most TMO's would describe it, his head or neck.

Venter appeared to avoid injury and escape unscathed, but it's the type of challenge that has been heavily clamped down on of late, with us seeing many similar incidents resulting in cards and bans.

In this case, it looks as though he got away with it, and France scored their first try of the match literally a minute later. A yellow or red card at that time may have prevented that, and made the Springboks' task ever easier, against a determined and desperate France side. 

There has been no citing or mention of it since the game, so perhaps there was nothing in it. But in the 2017 era of players being red carded and banned for far tamer challenges, it comes as a bit of a surprise that this particular challenge was overlooked.

4 Comments

  • felipeg
    7:05 PM 21/11/2017

    Surely it's illegal and everything... But looking at the video I must confess I mainly find it really funny :-)

  • drg
    12:45 PM 21/11/2017

    *blood red eyes

  • drg
    12:44 PM 21/11/2017

    ....I hope your use of the word 'but' isn't your way of trying to justify the actions of the Frenchman..

    Frenchman does wrong.

    Boks do wrong...

    Both valid arguments.

    Personally I don't think this action was that bad.. in this day and age everything is over analysed and players are punished for innocuous actions. Of course I read about this 'incident' before RD posted this and as usual I awaited eagerly some video of a vicious bloodthirsry Frenchman with his grimacing face and blood red slamming a poor unsuspecting bok into the ground head first with such force that the groundskeeper will be rolling that spot for weeks.... And of course I was disappointed as it turns out it was about as violent as a cool summer breeze and a typical reflection of how the media loves to blood up the plays of today furthering our soft skinned attitudes..

  • oliver
    10:32 AM 21/11/2017

    yes Doumayrou was lucky....
    But I thought the Boks were getting away with an awful lot of diving in the rucks.

    Anyways as a French fan I'm quite concerned about the 6 Nations coming up... I feel like we've been waiting for a resurgence from Les Bleus for so long....