Jeff : New citings procedure

by Portnoy Sun 02 Sep 2012, 7:37 am

The Rugby Football Union has announced a series of changes to citing procedures ahead of the new season of Aviva Premiership rugby with the aim of speeding up the disciplinary process.

The main change to the previous rules sees the length of time citing officers have to cite a player cut from four days to just 24 hours. In the Championship, the previous window has been changed from five days to four.

The new rules also reiterate that the citing officer must be convinced that the "act of foul play merited the award of a red card" while clubs will also have less time to refer an incident to the panel with the new rules stating that this must be done within four hours and not the previous 48 hours. Championship clubs will have 24 hours to consider referring an incident.

Disciplinary hearings will now also happen on the Tuesday after the game and if a club decides to appeal then that will happen on the Thursday.

The changes are reportedly set to be followed by a more controversial move by the International Rugby Board that could see any cited player immediately suspended until their hearing.

http://www.espnscrum.com/premiership-2012-13/rugby/story/169050.html

Four hours seems plenty with all the technology available although in special circumstances like when the footage is not immediately available, but comes to light later, either via the TV company's secondary cameras or (like in the BOD spear tackle on the Lions tour to NZ) via private phone cam or such like, I feel that some slack should be cut and permissible for serious acts of foul play.