What A Nut Job: Rugby Player Receives An 8-Game Suspension For A "Grade F Attack To Testicles"
BBC – Bradford hooker George Flanagan has been banned for eight games for a Grade F “attack to the testicles” in his side’s Championship loss to Toronto on 4 August.
At the independent tribunal hearing, the 32-year-old was deemed to have made contact with Toronto full-back Hakim Miloudi while making a tackle.
Flanagan has also been fined £250 and will miss the rest of the season. In addition, the ex-Hunslet player will miss the opening five games next term. Grade F charges carry a suspension tariff of eight games or more, so his ban is the shortest possible punishment for the offence.
8 games?!? He barely even touched ‘em!
Where I come from, that’s just a good ol’ fashion “Cup Check”. I’m not here to victim blame or anything like that, but it sure as heck seems like this wouldn’t be an issue at all if this Hakim Miloudi character was just wearing a cup. Are you really going to suspend a guy just for making sure that everybody is out there wearing the proper equipment? Because that seems a little backwards to me. Rugby players are already a bunch of maniacs for not wearing helmets or shoulder pads or really any other type of protective gear.
I will admit that buddy over here looks guilty as heck though. You see how quickly he got out of that scrum once he got a little tug on those nuts? Hightailed it straight out of the frame. And I think that there could be the main difference between a simple Cup Check and a “Grade F Attack to Testicles”. Because when you go for the cup check, it’s more of a standard sack tap. You’re not cupping the balls and giving them a yank. So that’s where George Flanagan went wrong. If he would have just gone for the sack tap, maybe he gets slapped with a fine but that’s all. I guess that’s why they say “usually you have to pay extra for that”. But the fact that he grabbed the balls, pretty much asked the dude to cough, and then went for the sack rip at the end? Maybe that crosses the line a bit. But all is fair in love and rugby.