Remember last time...

Our hero (gulp) had led you to the precipice of How a Player could be cited for something they had been sin-binned for, and then failed (utterly) to give a reason.

Special thanks to somebody learned (I forget their name) - they put me on the right track.

Previously I had thought that the IRB had done a pedantic and over the top job with their publication "The Laws of the game of Rugby Union"

What I now have my hands on are the IRB Regulations - they are a strapping, mucho 3.54 Mb beast of a PDF file which puts the Laws sub 1 Mb PDF file to shame.

Faced with reading this, I decided to have a wee lie down!

But after only 40 days of ignoring it, I have finally girded myself and dived in. And really it is all quite simple.

I will never make a true lawyer as I have only read two pages and get the general idea - but I think that it will suffice to answer our question.

First a bit of a quote from Regulation 17 (of the IRB 2004) "Illegal and/or Foul Play and Misconduct".

17.3.1 This Regulation 17 sets out the procedures for dealing with the following disciplinary matters:

(a) When a Player is Ordered Off the playing enclosure;

(b) When a Player is cited for an act or acts of illegal and/or Foul Play;

(c) When a Player has been Temporarily Suspended three times in accordance with regulation 17.20; and

(d) When an act or acts of Misconduct may have been committed by a Union, Player or Person.

So you see we are interested in (b).

The following - which gets to the point - I have paraphrased to save on Web hosting costs :-)

17.6.2 Citing Commissioner (CC) policy:
(a) CC may cite a player if they believed the player should have been sent off for an incident(s).

(b) The player may be cited even if the incident was dealt with by the match officials, as long as the player wasn't "Ordered off" for that incident(s).

(c) A Player sin-binned may be still be cited for that incident or any other incident(s).

(d) The CC is independent of all match officials, and anyone involved with the disciplinary hearings. (And vice versa).

(e) No-one else can cite a player. However the Union of either team may refer any incident to the CC. They must do this within 12 hours of the match. The CC decides whether to act on the referral. The CC decision is final.

I think that you are starting to get the picture.

The Citing Commissioner is a safety net for the match officials - if in his/her opinion somebody should have been marched for something, then they can cite that player.

And that's it!

What happens then is completely up to the Judicial Officer, the Disciplinary Committee, and perhaps and Appeals Committee.

These bodies are independent as well, and they sit in judgement on whoever is presented to them.

They might decide that the original punishment was enough - they might agree that there was more to it and impose "sanctions". Who knows?

So the answer to our original question is in three parts:

(1) A player can be cited if the Citing Commissioner believes they should have been sent off for any incident(s), even if that incident(s) were dealt with by the match officials and even if the player was sin-binned for that incident(s).

(2) A cited player is presented to the Judiciary who decides whether or not the player should receive further sanction, and then how much more they should be punished.

(3) All Officials are independent of each other. A citing does not mean a sanction will be imposed.

Hope that clears that up Citing! Now we can all get some sleep!!