Springboks front rower Jan-Hendrik Wessels has been slapped with a nine-game ban for grabbing the genitals of another player during a United Rugby Championship match. <\/p>\n
The incident occurred in the 18th minute of the Vodacom Bulls’ 28-27 win over Connacht on October 17. <\/p>\n
In a replay of the incident, Connacht foward Josh Murphy could be seen reacting angrily as he tussled with the Bulls player during a ruck. <\/p>\n
Murphy struck Wessels on the head and appealed to the referee, who checked the TMO but could find no conclusive evidence. <\/p>\n
He was handed a 20-minute red card for the strikes. <\/p>\n
A week later, following a disciplinary process, Murphy’s red card was rescinded, and Wessels was handed a nine-game suspension. <\/p>\n
The panel found an act of foul play had occurred, and that the incident met the red card threshold. <\/p>\n
“A player must not do anything that is against the spirit of good sportsmanship. This includes grabbing, twisting or squeezing the genitals,” it said. <\/p>\n
The panel reduced the ban by three weeks, from twelve to nine, due to “the player\u2019s good conduct prior to and at the hearing and good record”.<\/p>\n
Both Wessels and the Bulls have the right to appeal. <\/p>\n
The man means Wessels will be forced to miss several URC matches, as well as the Springboks’ upcoming tests against Japan, France, Italy, and Ireland. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Springboks front rower Jan-Hendrik Wessels has been slapped with a nine-game ban for grabbing the genitals of another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,6327,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-98159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}