The Lions player accused of spitting at Munster’s Diarmuid Barron during their BKT United Rugby Championship clash last Saturday will face no further action.<\/p>\n
Munster won the game at Thomond Park 24-17 to secure a spot in the play-offs and guarantee a place in next season’s Champions Cup.<\/p>\n
The alleged incident happened just after the hour mark, with Barron raising a complaint to the officials.<\/p>\n
The TMO was unable to verify it. Following a lengthy delay, play resumed.<\/p>\n
After the match, Munster head coach Clayton McMillan said: “We only have three or four angles available to us. I’m sure others might have a look at it but that\u2019s not our job to do now.<\/p>\n
“Other people will have a look and if there\u2019s something there to see, then they\u2019ll deal with it, and if there isn\u2019t, then we\u2019ll move forward.”<\/p>\n
Citing commissoner Eugene Ryan, who has over 15 years’ experience in the role, ruled that the video footage of the alleged incident was inconclusive.<\/p>\n
A URC statement read: “The allegation of spitting that occurred in the Munster versus Fidelity SecureDrive Lions on Saturday, May 16 was reviewed the Citing Commissioner, Eugene Ryan (IRFU).<\/p>\n
“Having examined all available camera angles, the video footage was inconclusive and there was no clear and obvious unsportsmanlike conduct by Lions No 6.<\/p>\n
“In particular: ‘The audio statement by No 16 of Munster is clear and he states that No 6 of Lions spat into his mouth but the audio statement from No 6 Lions contradicts this and he states that he had trouble with his gum shield after the upright contact before the ruck. He categorically denied the accusation of spitting’.<\/p>\n
“As such no citing is feasible in this case.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lions player accused of spitting at Munster’s Diarmuid Barron during their BKT United Rugby Championship clash last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-455272","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\/455272","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=455272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}