Francois Steyn
The SANZAR Appeal against the Ruling of the Judicial Officer in the Francois Steyn case, was heard on Tuesday and the Appeals Committee, chaired by Terry Willis (Australia) and comprising Nigel Hampton QC (New Zealand) and Robert Stelzner SC (South Africa), has ruled in favour of SANZAR, setting aside the verdict of the judicial hearing which cleared Francois Steyn of a lifting tackle and which expunged the Red Card.
The Appeals Committee unanimously upheld the appeal brought by SANZAR and found that Steyn breached Law 10.4 (j) and that the referee was correct to Red Card the player during the match between the Cell C Sharks and the Chiefs played at Growthpoint Kings Park in Durban on Saturday 21 March 2015.
The Committee determined that the relevant sanction was 4 matches. After taking into consideration the Sharks’ bye in Round 11, Steyn was suspended from all forms of the game up to and including 3 May 2015.
In a suspension of 4 matches, the BYE week of the Sharks is not counted as a suspension week, resulting in an effective 5 week suspension for Francois Steyn.
Appeal Hearing Details: 31 March 2015 @ 17:00 AEDT, 19:00 NZ Time, 08:00 SA Time via videoconference
Appeals Committee: Terry Willis (Chairman, Australia), Nigel Hampton QC (New Zealand), Robert Stelzner SC (South Africa)
Player: Francois Steyn
Team: Cell C Sharks
Position: Centre
Date of Original Judicial Hearing: 25 March 2015
Outcome of original SANZAR judicial hearing: At a SANZAR judicial hearing on 23 March 2015, SANZAR Judicial Officer, Jannie Lubbe SC, found Francois Steyn not guilty of contravening Law 10.4 (j), which provides: Lifting a player from the ground and dropping or driving that player into the ground whilst that player’s feet are still off the ground such that the player’s head and/or upper body come into contact with the ground is dangerous play.
Correct decision…
Not to deny that he is guilty… But the situation is quite bizzare.
Should this be a wake up call of how ridiculously unbalanced the judicial system is?
How on earth do you go from innocent one week to being severely punished the next AS WELL AS a red card in game?
Was the second judicial comittee given a mandate to be much stricter the second time? That severely skews the supposed impartiality.
Could the sharks appeal and with a different judicial comitee get the new ban dowb to two weeks?
And then you get a guy like messam who is found guilty with no sanctions at all.
Actually this whole system appears to be a lottery or more simply… A joke.
And relax. Im not defending the tackle.
I thought Steyn getting off on technicalities in the first hearing was wrong….therefore the right of appeal…which was always going to be a foregone conclusion imo…its just the way they come up with these what looks like arbitrary stand down periods…is there a proper system of how they load these weeks off.
1 @ grootblousmile:
Possibly, but will all the hearings around the World Rugby be consistent with this in future, this is the problem?
“In a suspension of 4 matches, the BYE week of the Sharks is not counted as a suspension week, resulting in an effective 5 week suspension for Francois Steyn.”
It is not an effective 5 week suspension it is a 5 week suspension that is effectively a 4 week one, unless Steyn is completetly banned from all rugby activities in those 5 weeks, training with the Sharks squad etc, which I doubt he is so he is only being banned for playing the 4 games hence my opinion that it is an effective 4 week suspension.
5 @ Bullscot:
Yip, hope they start being much more consitent in their sentences!!
7 @ grootblousmile:
I think that will just remain a dream of ours GBS, even in looking at foul play that took place in the same weekend in their own league in the same game SANZAR have made a mess of things (Liam Messam getting off scot free for his choking Botma), so how on earth will there ever be consistency across the rugby world. I think the best thing we can hope for is transparency and impartiality but if you look at who initially lead the panel that found Steyn not guilty and then who was in charge that gave him a pretty stiff sentence you have to wonder even if you don’t really want to question the integrity of those involved.
4 @ Te Rangatira:
This one was not exactly the same but similar with a worse result and as far as can gather no one was banned, managed to successfully argue that there was someone else involved as well, as in the Steyn case, so got off on that ‘technicality’:
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