Former England captain Will Carling has defended Joe Marler for grabbing Alun Wyn Jones' penis in Saturday's Six Nations clash, calling his actions 'an intended humorous wind up'.
Carling, a triple Grand Slam winner, says the fallout from the first-half incident at Twickenham is a 'total over-reaction'.
Wales captain Jones wants World Rugby to review what happened and it is likely to be looked at by the match citing commissioner, which could leave Marler in disciplinary trouble.
Carling, who led England in 59 of his 72 caps after being named captain aged just 22, joined Eddie Jones' England team as a leadership mentor.
And he went on to social media to play down the incident, labelling the reaction to what happened as 'ludicrous'.
"Think perspective is needed on Joe Marler ‘incident’," Carling tweeted out. "Surely by just watching the footage we can all see it was not aggressive, did not cause pain.
"So jumping to all these ludicrous assumptions is just total over-reaction to what was intended to be a humorous wind up."
When challenged what right he has to comment on the matter, Carling responded: "Because he hasn’t tried to wind people up his whole career has he!"
World Rugby's punishment for what they term "testicle grabbing or twisting or squeezing" ranges from a suspension of 12 weeks to 24 weeks or more.
World renowned referee Jonathan Kaplan says Twickenham referee Ben O'Keeffe should have yellow carded Marler for the incident, but says no further World Rugby punishment is necessary.
