MARK KEOHANE wants the Stormers to appeal tighthead prop Neethling Fouche’s four-game suspension, arguing that prejudicial verdicts like these cannot go unchallenged.
Fouche will be unavailable for the remainder of the Stormers’ Vodacom URC league campaign after a disciplinary process last week found him guilty of foul play.
The 32-year-old scrum anchor was sent off for what was deemed a dangerous tackle on centre Ben Carson during a URC defeat by Ulster at Kingspan Stadium in round 14 of the competition.
Writing for TimesLIVE, Keohane believes the Stormers leadership has no choice but to challenge Fouche’s conviction, claiming he should never have received a red card, let alone faced further punishment.
An all-Welsh disciplinary panel, according to Keohane, unanimously punished a player with an exemplary record – just one technical yellow card in 77 matches across four seasons of the URC.
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He condemns the TMO’s intervention through frame-by-frame analysis that exaggerated the head contact, and points to systemic bias where defenders face punishment regardless of the ball-carrier’s contribution to dangerous contact.
“This was a rugby accident, the head clash being incidental in the context of the attacking player’s actions and, in a rugby world free of sanitisation, it would have simply been ‘play on’,” Keohane writes.
“This is an injustice and the disciplinary’s verdict screams of bias.
“There must be an appeal, because verdicts like these can’t go unchallenged. There must be a consequence to such prejudice.
“There must be recourse for Fouche, as there must be for any player in his situation.”
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