Ronan O’Gara was sent to the stands yesterday as his La Rochelle side lost out to Pau in a high-scoring Top 14 match at the Stade du Hameau.<\/p>\n
O’Gara twice remonstrated with officials before being ordered off the sideline by referee Jeremy Rozier.<\/p>\n
The first disagreement took place after La Rochelle’s Antoine Hastoy created some unwanted history by picking up the fastest red card in the history of the competition.<\/p>\n
After gathering a garryowen, he caught Aaron Grandidier-Nkanang with a boot to the face as he came back down, drawing blood.<\/p>\n
O’Gara wasn’t impressed with the decision, coming onto the field of play and having a conversation with Rozier, with the referee making it clear that he had no other option but to show the red card.<\/p>\n
But the former Ireland out-half didn’t heed the warning and again displayed his anger at a decision going against his side just before the hour mark.<\/p>\n
La Rochelle attacked and were close to the Pau line, only for the hosts to turn over the ball, despite the protests of the visiting players.<\/p>\n
O’Gara’s protests were brought to the attention of Rozier by his sideline officials.<\/p>\n
“A start like that is difficult to digest, to understand,” said O’Gara afterwards.<\/p>\n
“But with a little hindsight, I understand the logic behind the ‘kung fu fighting\u2019 – the studs in the opponent\u2019s head.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s hard to believe that there was any intention to hurt the opponent. The referee saw blood, and blood is what decides everything. Are there mitigating circumstances? Yes, I think so.”<\/p>\n
Of his own red card, he added: “It\u2019s the job of the fourth and fifth officials to pass the message on to the referee. I contested a decision. I have to accept that.”<\/p>\n
La Rochelle lots our 55-35 at home to Pau and sit 10th in the Top 14 standings after 11 games. In the same Champions Cup pool as Leinster, once more, they host Leicester on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronan O’Gara was sent to the stands yesterday as his La Rochelle side lost out to Pau in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-169080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}