{"id":591495,"date":"2026-04-07T15:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T15:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/591495\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T15:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T15:32:12","slug":"nathan-jibulu-sale-sharks-hooker-cited-for-biting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/591495\/","title":{"rendered":"Nathan Jibulu: Sale Sharks hooker cited for biting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sale Sharks hooker Nathan Jibulu could face a lengthy ban after being cited for allegedly biting Harlequins’ replacement prop Will Hobson.<\/p>\n

The incident is said to have occurred in the 69th minute of Sale’s Champions Cup last-16 win against Harlequins<\/a> at the Twickenham Stoop on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Under World Rugby’s sanctions, if found guilty of biting 23-year-old Jibulu could face anywhere between 12 weeks for a low-end offence, up to 208 weeks – which equates to four years – for a top-end violation.<\/p>\n

Law 9.12 states that a player “must not physically abuse anyone” and that “physical abuse involves biting”.<\/p>\n

The complaint was made by the match citing commissioner Sebastien Lorant-Raze and will be heard by an independent three-person panel on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Sale will travel to Leinster for the quarter-finals on Saturday (17:30 BST) after the Dubliners won a 49-31 thriller against Edinburgh.<\/a> <\/p>\n

The Sharks are already without front row pair Bevan Rodd, who dislocated his shoulder, and Luke Cowan-Dickie, with a suspected broken his wrist or forearm, after both went off during Saturday’s match. <\/p>\n

The injuries have also jeopardised their participation in England’s tour this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sale Sharks hooker Nathan Jibulu could face a lengthy ban after being cited for allegedly biting Harlequins’ replacement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-591495","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\/591495","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=591495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}