This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with behaviour on the sidelines\u2026<\/p>\n
Slaps, kicks and rants<\/p>\n
A fun weekend of rugby all over the place, both for leading teams and for a handful of teams struggling for form. The Waratahs back on track and the Hurricanes hitting category five. Bristol stunned by Harlequins while Saints, Bath and Leicester march on. Perpignan thrashing a lifeless Toulon and Toulouse in fine form. Glasgow and the Stormers kicking on towards home semi-finals.<\/p>\n
And across all four top leagues, 25 matches, only two red cards. There have been far, far worse weekends for discipline. Still push one problem down somewhere, and so often it crops up somewhere else.<\/p>\n
This weekend it was around the fringes. Even if not a top-flight game, the red card handed out to Alan Paver of the Cornish Pirates was an ugly thing. A full viewing of the incident, or more to the point, the critical moment, is unfortunately not available, but the moments leading up to it are available on YouTube and are pretty damning.<\/p>\n
The Pirates\u2019 bench can clearly be seen trying to prevent Jake Garside from grabbing the ball in order to get a quick restart going. When Garside realises that the referee\u2019s decision is, in fact, a penalty to the Pirates, he can also clearly be seen trying to get away from the bench members he had been confronting, and being held back among the melee by, presumably, Paver. Upon which the YouTube stream cuts away to a replay and only returns to the action when the players from both sides have already rushed in to calm it all down.<\/p>\n
So nothing conclusive, although the referee\u2019s summary is pretty succinct and not the hesitant delivery of someone who was not sure of what he saw.<\/p>\n
PREM Rugby round 12: Five takeaways as \u2018Alan Partridge-esque\u2019 Geoff Parling incident overshadows weekend that witnessed \u2018rare feat\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Who\u2019s hot and who\u2019s not: Saints \u2018box clever\u2019 with Henry Pollock, \u2018minnows lighting up\u2019 URC and Geoff Parling \u2018turns the air blue\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Anyway, it is notable that although the Pirates have accepted responsibility, acknowledged the gravity of it, pledged to cooperate with the RFU and investigate internally as well, they have stopped short of an apology. Not that such is absolutely due until Paver has been disciplined, but it did seem odd that on a weekend when Geoff Parling<\/a> has been almost grovelling<\/a> because he took umbrage with a ridiculous media stunt and quite rightly gave Craig Doyle a shove-off, a coach who got aggressive with an opposing player should be staying quiet.<\/p>\n And back to Parling: exactly what does he need to be sorry about? No malice meant from Doyle and his new sidekick or whatever, but it is ridiculous that TNT\u2019s team thought they could be faffing around with a ball like that on a pitch where two professional teams are trying to do their jobs.<\/p>\n Parling could probably have avoided the f-bomb, although he probably had no idea the live cameras were actually rolling; of all the minutes\u2019 coverage of the Gloucester-Leicester<\/a> clash, the one of the presenter slicing a wide conversion several metres wide of the uprights was the most uninformative and infantile, so why would anybody conceive that it might be worth recording, never mind be on live TV. Was he censured for the shove? Good grief, if TV personalities are going to stuff around on the pitch like naughty schoolboys (not to mention scurrying away like them when the trouble comes) they ought to expect to be treated like such.<\/p>\n