Two men have been charged with assault after an alleged coward punch attack during a junior rugby sevens grand final on Sunday, in which a referee was knocked unconscious.<\/p>\n
It’s alleged that after the under 14s game at Southwell Park in Lyneham, in Canberra’s north, an 18-year-old man from Fairfield, NSW, entered the field and assaulted one referee.<\/p>\n
The man’s 42-year-old father, also from Fairfield, then allegedly “coward punched the second referee from behind” as he was helping the first referee, knocking him unconscious.<\/p>\n
He was transported to hospital by paramedics.<\/p>\n
Police say they spoke to witnesses who directed them to the 18-year-old man, who attempted to leave before being arrested and taken into custody.<\/p>\n
Later that night, the father was arrested and taken to the watch house, where both he and his son were charged with assault.<\/p>\n
They were granted bail and are scheduled to appear in court in November.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Canberra club Uni-North Rugby Union Club condemned the incident.<\/p>\n
“This incident does not reflect the values of our club or the game we all love,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
“We are cooperating fully with ACT Rugby and relevant authorities to ensure this matter is handled appropriately, and we will review any involvement by our members or spectators to ensure accountability.<\/p>\n
“Our thoughts are with the referees and volunteers involved, and we wish them a full and swift recovery from this unacceptable incident.”<\/p>\n
ACT Policing are appealing for any witnesses with photos and footage related to the incident to come forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men have been charged with assault after an alleged coward punch attack during a junior rugby sevens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[2666,100471,24278,64,63,2667,106311,106307,96444,32893,11288,4082,2668,106309,24097,760,106308,9705,106310,85],"class_list":["post-160206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-act","tag-arrested","tag-assault","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-canberra","tag-city-police-station","tag-coward-punch","tag-fairfield","tag-father","tag-grand-final","tag-hospital","tag-local-stories","tag-lyneham","tag-referee","tag-rugby","tag-sevens","tag-son","tag-southwell-park","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}