The moldings and the hushed surroundings of the luxurious Edinburgh Balmoral Hotel do not lend themselves well to considerations on all kinds of tussles. But this Monday morning, we still talked a lot about punch during the debriefing of Raphaël Ibañez and Fabien Galthié at the hotel where the Blues have taken up residence in Scotland. Finally, especially one: that of the tricolor pillar Mohamed Haouas, whose bloodshed and red card weighed in the defeat (28-17) of the XV of France on March 8 at Murrayfield.
But the manager and coach of the Blues did not come to expose their pillar of 25 years to the vindictive of France in rugby, deprived of a first Grand Slam in ten years after this setback. No, this Monday morning, the two men came to explain the punch of their inexperienced before, who celebrated March 8 his fourth selection. And above all, counter-attack.
“Momo has been exemplary since the start of the Tournament and we tried to understand what could have caused such a bad reaction on his part, underlines Raphaël Ibañez. We found quite meaningful images. We have completed a file as precisely as possible. The fate of their third center line is in the hands of the Citation Commissioner. "
Reduce the penalty
The interested party, Edinburgh rugby player Nick Haining, indeed played a role in the altercation concluded by the punch of Haouas on his partner Jamie Ritchie. On the television images, we see his fingers coming into contact with the eyes of the young pillar of Montpellier. "I think it could have been penalized with a red card," said the manager of the Blues, who attached the video clip of this sequence to his complaint.
@FranceRugby Haouas does not have to retaliate so that we are in #XVdeFrance on the other hand we say what about the violent charge in the back of J Ritchie 3s earlier, we say what of the fork of Nick Haining in the eyes of Haouas to make it break? Nothing according to Barnes🤮 pic.twitter.com/izcATfhRrY
- frederico fiumani (@ fredericofiuma1) March 9, 2020"We were lucky to have images that were not offered, quipped Fabien Galthié, who the day before at a press conference had already pointed out the time taken to analyze the videos of the brawl. It's a choice of achievement, it's part of the context of these games played outside. "
By pointing to the role of Nick Haining, the Blues staff hopes to reduce the penalty for Mohamed Haouas. The World Rugby scale exposes the right pillar to a suspension of two to 52 weeks. "He will be summoned and I will be by his side," explains Raphaël Ibañez. There is no accident in what happened and we also have some answers… ”
"With experience, it falls ..."
On March 8, the French players took up the defense of their partner, even believing, like the three-quarter center Arthur Vincent, that it was "a collective fault because we did not know how to stay cold" . In the coaching of the Blues, we see above all the proof of the lack of maturity of this young team.
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“With experience, Momo falls at that time (note: when Haining comes to touch his face) and it stops there. We are a construction team, says Fabien Galthié. The day before the match, we thought that it was someone who was going to be targeted that we would have to work on this subject. But so far, he had been challenged quite a bit and he was moving on. On this start of the match, there are a lot of actions where he is still well targeted. It will now be up to the disciplinary committee to decide his fate.