England were caught up in the high-tackle storm that has engulfed the World Cup with Owen Farrell lucky to avoid serious injury after a sickening blow to the head against the USA and Piers Francis facing a possible ban.
The USA flanker John Quill became the first player to receive a red card at the tournament after a shoulder charge directly to Farrell’s head. Farrell was left prone on the turf but did not leave the field for a head injury assessment. After England’s seven-try victory Eddie Jones claimed Farrell was “missing part of his nose” as a result of a separate incident but dismissed concerns his captain could be sidelined through injury.
The USA coach, Gary Gold, had no complaints with Quill’s red card but, after he was shown a video clip of Francis’s clumsy high tackle on Will Hooley only seconds into the match, he said that should have been reviewed if it was a shoulder to the head. Francis charged towards Hooley straight from kick-off and made contact with the USA full-back’s head but the incident was not reviewed by the referee, Nic Berry, despite World Rugby’s public rebuke of officials earlier this week. Francis now faces an anxious wait to discover whether he is cited. Hooley played on but after a separate incident involving the England flanker Mark Wilson, he suffered a concussion and was taken to hospital.. As a result Gold described his side’s evening as a “calamity in Kobe”.
Jones refused to discuss the Farrell or Francis incident in detail, saying only: “We leave it to the judiciary.” He also insisted he did not need to remind his players of the dangers of making high tackles after all World Cup officials were reprimanded by the governing body. “I don’t speak to the players about tackling high because they know where to tackle,” he said. “We play a tough physical game and we go out hitting people as hard as we can. We want to do it legally but players make mistakes.” Asked if Farrell might have come off the pitch for a HIA, Jones said: “We have all the medical staff looking for that out there. That’s what they get paid to do.”
The two incidents in England’s second consecutive bonus-point win in Pool C came only hours after the full written judgment from the Australia wing Reece Hodge’s disciplinary hearing was published. On Wednesday Hodge was given a three-week ban for a dangerous tackle on Fiji’s Peceli Yato. The Hodge written judgment contained the remarkable claim that Hodge had “no effective knowledge of World Rugby’s high tackle framework” and that he had not been specifically coached about it. It is believed Australia dispute the claim.
Hodge’s tackle last Saturday initially went unpunished despite World Rugby’s clampdown on high tackles. It was one of a number of incidents in the opening matches of the tournament which prompted World Rugby’s extraordinary statement about the standard of refereeing on Tuesday.
Only hours after that statement was published, the World Cup was further plunged into chaos when Samoa’s Ray Lee-Lo and Moto Matu’u received yellow cards for tackles that ought to have led to sendings off. Both players were subsequently cited and on Thursday Lee-Lo was handed a three-week ban, ruling him out of the rest of the pool stage, while judgment on Matu’u was delayed at his hearing for “a period no later than 24 hours”.
Meanwhile Jones declared stage one of England’s campaign done after backing up Sunday’s bonus-point win over Tonga with another against the USA despite a four-day turnaround. “We move into stage two now, which is Argentina, then we’ve got stage three, four and five,” he said. “It’s like the Tour de France. You don’t need to be in the yellow jersey now. The percentage of time you need to be in the yellow jersey is the time that it counts, not when it doesn’t count.”
