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EPCR issue statement following 30-man all-in-brawl between Saracens and Munster

Owen Farrell is at the centre of a fight gets in a fight during the Saracens and Munster clash at Allianz Park (Photo by Henry Browne/Getty Images)

The EPCR have issued an official statement following the 30-man plus all-in-brawl that marred Saracens and Munster’s European Champions Cup clash at Allianz Park yesterday.

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The brawl ignited after an exchange between Munster’s medic and England hooker Jamie George.

Mark McCall claimed that George was the victim of a verbal assault by Dr Jamie Kearns, the Irish province’s chief medic.

Saracens assistant coach Alex Sanderson alleged during a pitchside interview that Dr Kearns “said something derogatory to Jamie George about his weight” as the second quarter was coming to a close, and McCall condemned the visitors’ medic.

“Clearly this shouldn’t happen, we all know that. I don’t think what was said to Jamie was good at all. It started a 30-man brawl,” McCall said. “Owen Farrell got penalised for running into the melee but from what I saw 29 other people ran into it!”

“It was a strange penalty to give and it was instigated by a member of their staff who said something horrible to one of our players. Something pretty bad was said at Jamie. He wouldn’t have reacted the way he reacted otherwise. We’ll take our time to decide whether we do anything.”

Munster head coach Johann van Graan declined to cast any light on Dr Kearns’ involvement. “I don’t know what happened there. There were a lot of people involved which wasn’t nice to see,” van Graan said.

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“We will look into that, I won’t speculate on it. So many things happen in a game of rugby. You don’t want to see a fight.”

The statement reads:

“EPCR has decided to investigate incidents which occurred during the second half of the Heineken Champions Cup, Round 4 match between Saracens and Munster Rugby at Allianz Park yesterday (Saturday, 14 December).

“Information will now be sought from the match officials and from both clubs, and EPCR will be making no further comment until the investigation has been completed.”

– Press Association, additional reporting RugbyPass

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J
JW 59 minutes ago
Why England's defence of the realm has crumbled without Felix Jones

This piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.


I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.


Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.


The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.

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