True to his word that he would support Tadhg Beirne in any hearing arising from his red card in Soldier Field last week, Beauden Barrett furnished the disciplinary panel which assembled on Tuesday evening with a statement that highlighted the mitigating circumstances of the third-minute incident when the two players collided.<\/p>\n
Barrett had unexpectedly taken a pass from his halfback partner Cam Roigard and run into Beirne, who absorbed the impact and fell backwards. But after a stoppage of four minutes and 45 seconds referee Pierre Brousset issued Beirne with a yellow card. Upon review, to the astonishment of most, the Foul Play Review Officer Dan Jones upgraded it to a red card.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spoke to Tadhg after the game and I was gutted for him to be honest,\u201d Barrett told the media afterwards. \u201cIt\u2019s one of these unfortunate parts of the game. I didn\u2019t expect the ball. I was hoping that Cam would have played the other option. [Tadhg] had no option and he didn\u2019t intentionally put a shot on me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t hide from the fact that I copped a shoulder to somewhere up there. That\u2019s what happened. I\u2019ll support him in terms of mitigating whatever happens next because I don\u2019t feel there\u2019s any intention there. It\u2019s just unfortunate.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly a miss in this instance. He may have only deserved a yellow but 20 (minutes) is the absolute worst in this instance. It\u2019s more me personally feeling for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sure enough, in a classy gesture from a classy individual, Barrett\u2019s statement to the disciplinary panel read: \u201cI was running a decoy line on the short side, inside out, on the left side of the field (bench side). The play wasn\u2019t designed for me to receive the ball, and I didn\u2019t expect to be involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, Cam passed me the ball unexpectedly. I caught it _ more by luck than anticipation \u2013 and because I wasn\u2019t prepared to carry, my body position was high and not committed with proper intent or force.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I carried into contact, I ran into a congested area, hoping Cam would play out the back. Initial contact was front-on and above the shoulder area. I take full responsibility for entering contact in a high position, as that contributed to the nature of the collision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe the opposition player could have done much differently \u2013 it was a contact sport situation, and fortunately, Tadhg showed good awareness and controlled his force, which prevented a more serious collision.\u201d<\/p>\n
The disciplinary panel also received a statement from the New Zealand doctor, Dr James McGarvey, which stated: \u201cBeauden Barrett did not suffer any direct injuries from the incident on the weekend that led to the red card.\u201d <\/p>\n
The red card was rightly revoked by the disciplinary panel, leaving Beirne free to play for Ireland against Japan on Saturday. <\/p>\n
The Barrett family \u2013 including Beauden\u2019s fellow All Blacks Scott and Jordie \u2013 spent a year in Ireland when Beauden was eight years old, and attended St Fiach\u2019s National School in Ballinacree, Co Meath, where he learnt to play Gaelic football. Their father Kevin, whose grandparents are Irish, had taken up temporary work on a dairy farm while also playing with Buccaneers.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t right the wrong of last week, but Beauden\u2019s gesture will heighten the affection in which the Barretts are held following Jordie\u2019s stint with Leinster last season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"True to his word that he would support Tadhg Beirne in any hearing arising from his red card…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[34133,18,19,17,34132,132,80610,85145],"class_list":{"0":"post-169187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-all-blacks","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-ireland-rugby","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tadhg-beirne","15":"tag-the-counter-ruck"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115512371025701614","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}