Tom Court, the Ulster prop forward, appeared today before an independent PRO12 Disciplinary Committee in Neath, South Wales, having been dismissed with a Red Card in the RaboDirect PRO12 match between Ulster and Leinster at Ravenhill on Friday 2 May 2014.
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The Disciplinary Committee, chaired by Simon Thomas, alongside Terry Vaux and Robert Williams (all from Wales), viewed the footage of the incident and listened to representations by, and on behalf of, the player via video-link.
The committee decided that the offence, a dangerous “lifting” tackle contrary to Law 10.4(j), was at the four-week low end of the IRB’s scale of sanctions for this type of offence and, in imposing a four-week suspension, they applied a deterrent factor of an additional week but then reduced the sanction by three weeks, to reflect, among other factors, the player’s acceptance of the red card and his previous excellent disciplinary record.
Tom Court is therefore suspended until midnight on Sunday 18 May and has the right of appeal.
Rugby-Talk comment: This is effectively a two match ban for Tom Court for a ‘tip’ tackle, although as far as these kind of tackles go, one has seen far worse. This rules him out of Saturday’s final PRO12 league match against Munster as well as Ulster’s semi-final game which is scheduled for next weekend (probably on Saturday 17 May against Leinster). However, his punishment for the incident would ultimately see him miss almost 3 games, as he was shown the Red Card as early as the 17th minute in last Friday’s match against Leinster.