Eben Etzebeth is expected to appear at a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday after his red card for alleged eye-gouging in the dominant victory against Wales on Saturday, with the Springboks lock potentially facing a long ban. The verdict is likely to be announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
As South Africa closed in on a record 73-0 victory in Cardiff<\/a>, Etzebeth clashed with the Welsh back-rower Alex Mann, appearing to make contact with his opponent\u2019s left eye in a fracas involving several players from both sides.<\/p>\n With two minutes left at the Principality Stadium, the 34-year-old was shown a permanent red card by the referee, Luc Ramos, after a review with the television match official, Eric Gauzins. \u201cYou have a clear finger in the eyes, so for me, it\u2019s a permanent red card,\u201d Ramos said during the review.<\/p>\n A ban would be a blow to Etzebeth\u2019s club, the Sharks, who begin their Champions Cup campaign in Toulouse on Sunday before hosting Saracens in Durban six days later. The maximum ban for making intentional contact with an opponent\u2019s eyes is four years, while an offence at the lowest end of the scale may result in a four-week suspension.<\/p>\n A mid-range offence could involve an eight-week ban and a top-end offence 12 weeks, with any ban\u2019s length potentially reduced in light of his previously good disciplinary record, and other submissions made by Etzebeth\u2019s team.<\/p>\n A number of factors will be considered, including the fact that Etzebeth reportedly apologised to Mann after the match. Should the panel find that Etzebeth intentionally eye-gouged his opponent, however, a long ban seems guaranteed.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what I can say now that won\u2019t be controversial,\u201d Rassie Erasmus, South Africa\u2019s head coach, said on Saturday. \u201dIt didn\u2019t look good, I think it was a justified red card. How it happened and why it happened, and if he was provoked, I\u2019m not sure. But that\u2019s definitely not the way we would have liked to end the game.\u201c<\/p>\n In January, the South Africa wing and Etzebeth\u2019s clubmate, Makazole Mapimpi, was banned for three matches having admitted making contact with the eye area of an opponent in a United Rugby Championship encounter against Cardiff. Mapimpi had previously been banned for two weeks for a similar incident involving Maxime Lucu, of Bordeaux-B\u00e8gles, in 2023.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In April Henco Venter, of Glasgow Warriors, received a six-week ban for making contact with the eye area of Dan Cole in a Champions Cup game against Leicester. Chris Ashton (10-week ban in 2016) and Dylan Hartley (six-month ban in 2007) are other notable names to be punished for similar offences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eben Etzebeth is expected to appear at a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday after his red card for alleged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-321063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321063","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=321063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}