Willis, the Saracens No8, will not be part of England\u2019s squad for the November Tests against Australia, Fiji, New Zealand and Argentina after he decided to sign for the French club Bordeaux B\u00e8gles<\/a> next season. As The Times revealed, the 26-year-old will still receive his \u00a3160,000 payment from the RFU<\/a> for the season \u2014 as one of 25 centrally contracted England players \u2014 despite the fact that the head coach, Steve Borthwick, is now refusing to pick him.<\/p>\n Willis has, however, done Borthwick a favour by supporting Cowan-Dickie, 32, at his disciplinary hearing on Tuesday. Cowan-Dickie was shown a 20-minute red card when he hit Willis high while trying to stop him scoring. He was not shown a full red card, as it was not conclusive that he had struck Willis in the head.<\/p>\n Willis, who will be joining Bordeaux next season, has done Borthwick a favour despite being ruled ineligible for England duty<\/p>\n BOB BRADFORD\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n The disciplinary panel heard from both Cowan-Dickie and Willis, and the Saracens player said he was not hit in the head. Alex Sanderson, the Sale director of rugby, revealed as much on Saturday night after the game.<\/p>\n \u201cTom Willis said, \u2018You didn\u2019t hit me on the head,\u2019 and Luke\u2019s like, \u2018I can\u2019t believe it\u2019,\u201d Sanderson said. \u201cThis is a new process, the 20-minute red card, and I\u2019m sure the TMO saw what he saw and made a decision on the back of his analysis. I hope that\u2019s the key because I want him to play for England. I don\u2019t want him to get banned and miss out on Leicester next week and England the week after.\u201d<\/p>\n Confirming that Cowan-Dickie had avoided a ban, the RFU disciplinary panel said: \u201cThe panel convened to hear the case and, after careful deliberation, has decided to overturn the red card issued to Cowan-Dickie. The panel had the advantage of hearing oral testimony from both players involved in the incident. Additionally, they reviewed video footage from various angles and considered submissions from all parties concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n Cowan-Dickie is one of three hookers in Borthwick\u2019s squad, alongside Jamie George and Theo Dan, and is the frontrunner to start in the No2 shirt this autumn having been part of the British & Irish Lions tour to Australia in the summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Willis has helped Luke Cowan-Dickie escape a ban for a high tackle, thus freeing the hooker up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-219000","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\/219000","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=219000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"England](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/\/b8038e72-bc4d-4489-901b-ac8f54764ebb.jpg\")
<\/p>\n