One of the big talking points of the second Heineken Cup semi final, Northampton Saints against Perpignan, was the dangerous tackle that Julien Candelon made on Lee Dickson in the first half.
Saints, who convincingly won the match 23-7 to progress to the final, had just scored a try through Jon Clarke. From the restart things got worse for the visitors, as Candelon took scrumhalf Lee Dickson out in the air as he got under the high ball.
Dickson landed really badly, on the side of his neck and shoulder and despite receiving treatment and staying down for some time, was okay eventually and played on.
Candelon was promptly shown a yellow card, and was perhaps lucky to receive just that. Another interesting aspect of what went on though was the Saints medic, who came charging on to help, but barged through Candelon in the process, nearly sparking further chaos.
If you listen to the assistant ref you can hear him saying that he felt the medic did it deliberately and should be spoken to by ref George Clancy. Unfortunately Sky switched to a replay and the commentators were talking, so we couldn't hear or see exactly how Clancy dealt with it.
Amidst the pushing and shoving, there was also a fairly out of order moment when Perpignan lock Rimas Alvarez Kairelis pulled the touchjudge by the arm, something that just didn't look right. A point on that though, is that officials have whistles and flags for a reason. Blow them and wave them, but getting in the middle of a forward pack that's about to kick off isn't too smart.
Time: 03:17
0 Comments