Owen Farrell looks set to miss England’s opening Rugby World Cup pool fixture against Argentina in Marseille on 9 September after his 63rd-minute rush of blood against Wales at Twickenham. The Wales coach, Warren Gatland, believes the England captain could have few complaints about his upgraded red card and a potential four-match ban may now await.
England have only two more warm-up games against Ireland and Fiji before they face the Pumas and Farrell’s previous history of high tackle offences may count against him at his disciplinary hearing this week. As recently as January, Farrell received a four-week ban, later reduced to three, for a dangerous tackle in a club game and may struggle for similar mitigation this time.
Gatland, for one, felt the high shoulder to the head of Taine Basham, who subsequently failed his head injury assessment, was clear enough. “I think it was the right decision but hopefully for Owen’s sake he doesn’t get too long a ban. You need someone like him in the game. He’d be a big loss to England if he does have a lengthy ban. Given his previous I’m not too sure what’s going to happen with that. Fingers crossed it’s not long for him.”
England also face a nervous wait to discover if Freddie Steward is cited for his aerial tackle on Josh Adams which earned the full-back only a yellow card at the time. “It was probably on the threshold of a yellow to a red,” said Gatland. “He’s taken him out high in the air. Sometimes that decision, if it had been made by another official, might have been a red card. It was pretty close. It will be interesting to see what they come back with when they review it.”
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With the scrum-half Jack van Poortvliet having also suffered a nasty-looking ankle injury, England will almost certainly have to think again regarding their half-back pairing to face the Pumas. George Ford, Farrell’s likely replacement at fly-half, says the squad will support their captain regardless of the verdict. “He’s not a player who would intentionally want to do that,” said Ford. “We’ll get behind him, he’s our captain and leader and he’ll be back.”
England’s head coach, Steve Borthwick, would not be drawn on whether he now expected to be without Farrell – “What we’ll do is wait and see and deal in facts” – but stressed he was “proud of the character the players showed” after being reduced to 12 players in the second half. Gatland, though, felt Wales were to blame for their late downfall. “Our game management wasn’t good enough. We should have been comfortable. We did some good things last week but we capitulated a bit in terms of some guys not knowing their roles. But that was the most experienced England team they could put out there so we have got to be reasonably pleased. They didn’t really trouble us from an attacking perspective.”
