France could be without Axelle Berthoumieu for their World Cup semi-final against England following an alleged bite on Ireland’s Aoife Wafer.<\/p>\n
Ireland fell agonisingly short of a place in the last four, surrendering a 13-0 half-time lead to crash out 18-13 to France in their quarter-final at Sandy Park.<\/p>\n
The defeat was overshadowed by footage appearing to show France flanker Berthoumieu biting Wafer’s arm.<\/p>\n
Wafer was seen speaking to referee Aimee Barrett-Theron about the incident, gesturing that she had been bitten.<\/p>\n
Ireland captain Sam Monaghan confirmed she also raised the issue with officials, but no action was taken during the match.<\/p>\n
“I spoke to the referee,” said Monaghan. “Aoife told me – I didn’t see it myself but I spoke to the referee and asked them.”<\/p>\n
Biting is considered a serious offence under World Rugby’s disciplinary code, carrying a minimum entry-point ban of 12 matches.<\/p>\n
Retrospective action would almost certainly end Berthoumieu’s World Cup campaign and leave France without one of their most influential players for next Saturday’s semi-final showdown with tournament hosts and favourites England.<\/p>\n
Former England captain Maggie Alphonsi called the incident “disgraceful.”<\/p>\n
“I hate seeing that in the game – men’s or women’s,” she told the BBC. “It’s very clear. She should be punished for that.<\/p>\n
“It’s sad because the Women’s Rugby World Cup has been a celebration. It’s such a shame that now the headlines are going to be dominated by a silly incident from a player who didn’t need to do that. Now she will potentially miss the rest of the World Cup.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France could be without Axelle Berthoumieu for their World Cup semi-final against England following an alleged bite on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-137333","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}