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'It doesn't look great' - Blackett defends TMO over missed eye-gouging incident

By PA
(Photo by PA)

Wasps head coach Lee Blackett defended TMO Graham Hughes for not intervening in the potential eye-gouging incident that overshadowed his side’s 20-18 win at Newcastle.

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Replays suggested Falcons winger Mateo Carreras made contact with the eye of Wasps’ Josh Bassett in the first half but play surprisingly resumed without any further inspection.

Carreras will instead almost certainly face retrospective action but Blackett says the footage was difficult to assess in quick time, although he also admitted from what he did see that “it doesn’t look great”.

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“The first time that I saw the incident was on the TV and I’ve not seen it again, it’s been flagged as a potential citing incident,” he said.

“It doesn’t look great though does it? I can see why the TMO might not have spotted it in 20 seconds but it might have taken five or six minutes to zoom in. Josh Bassett wasn’t the happiest at half-time.”

Wasps used the incident as motivation, clawing back a 12-point half-time deficit thanks to second-half tries from Brad Shields and Tom West to snap a four-match losing streak.

“I think where we are at the moment, we just needed to get that win,” Blackett added.

“There’s plenty of things that we could patch over. The only slight frustration is the amount of time we’ve spent in their 22 without taking advantage of it. We seem to be getting held up over the line so many times and it’s at crucial moments in games.

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“I’d like to see our conversion rates improve and be a little bit better when we are in the right areas of the pitch. We’ve played in the right areas and put the pressure on them.”

In contrast, Newcastle failed to get out of the starting blocks in the second half and gifted Wasps a route back into the game, with two yellow cards in quick succession.

Greg Peterson and Michael Young were sent to the sin-bin for cynical infringements, helping to wipe out the first-half lead they built through tries from Marco Fuser and George Wacokecoke.

Falcons director of rugby Dean Richards said: “I think the second half is charged with abandon and we gave a few too many penalties and ended up with 13 men.

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“It’s always difficult when you go down to 13 men to give them the opportunity to take the lead and we kind of shot ourselves in the foot.

“We were quite pleased with our first-half performance as we started to show glimpses of what we are about. It’s probably the best back five in a scrum we’ve had and it’s not a bad back five when you look at what we had with lots of internationals.

“I thought we were doing really well against a very competitive and combative side and I’m just disappointed that we didn’t get the rewards for the pressure in the scrum.”

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J
JW 12 minutes ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Where? I remember saying "unders"? The LNR was formed by the FFR, if I said that in a way that meant the 'pro' side of the game didn't have an equal representation/say as the 'amateur' side (FFR remit) that was not my intent.


But also, as it is the governing body, it also has more responsibility. As long as WR looks at FFR as the running body for rugby in France, that 'power' will remain. If the LNR refuses to govern their clubs use of players to enable a request by FFR (from WR) to ensure it's players are able to compete in International rugby takes place they will simply remove their participation. If the players complain to the France's body, either of their health and safety concerns (through playing too many 'minutes' etc) or that they are not allowed to be part in matches of national interest, my understanding is action can be taken against the LNR like it could be any other body/business. I see where you're coming from now re EPCR and the shake up they gave it, yes, that wasn't meant to be a separate statement to say that FFR can threaten them with EPCR expulsion by itself, simply that it would be a strong repercussion for those teams to be removed (no one would want them after the above).


You keep bringing up these other things I cannot understand why. Again, do you think if the LNR were not acting responsibly they would be able to get away with whatever they want (the attitude of these posters saying "they pay the players")? You may deem what theyre doing currently as being irresponsible but most do not. Countries like New Zealand have not even complained about it because they've never had it different, never got things like windfall TV contracts from France, so they can't complain because theyre not missing out on anything. Sure, if the French kept doing things like withholding million dollar game payments, or causing millions of dollars of devaluation in rights, they these things I'm outlining would be taking place. That's not the case currently however, no one here really cares what the French do. It's upto them to sort themselves out if they're not happy. Now, that said, if they did make it obvious to World Rugby that they were never going to send the French side away (like they possibly did stating their intent to exclude 20 targeted players) in July, well then they would simply be given XV fixtures against tier 2 sides during that window and the FFR would need to do things like the 50/50 revenue split to get big teams visiting in Nov.

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