Leicester reveal how Freddie Steward is coping with red card saga

Interim Leicester boss Richard Wigglesworth has revealed how Freddie Steward is coping with the fallout from the controversial red card he shipped last weekend with England. The full-back was sent off in the round five Guinness Six Nations match in Dublin, igniting a huge firestorm about the decision taken by referee Jaco Peyper.

Steward was summoned to attend a virtually held disciplinary hearing on Tuesday evening and it emerged on Wednesday morning that the red card decision had been rescinded, a statement explaining that the England youngster should only have been yellow carded and should have been free to return to the field of play after a 10-minute sin-binning.

The 22-year-old would have feared a ban ruling him out from resuming his club season with Leicester in time for their March 31 Heineken Champions Cup round of 16 clash at home to Edinburgh.

Steward will now be available for that Mattioli Woods Welford Road cup game and he has been training away with Tigers this week ahead of Saturday’s Gallagher Premiership game at home to Bristol and will be involved off the bench as the 23rd man for that league match.

Asked by RugbyPass if Steward was back at work following his stressful Test-level ordeal, Wigglesworth said at his weekly Leicester media briefing: “He is here, he has trained, he is fully involved. He has been around. Delighted he is available. He is a quality player, so you want those guys available for selection.

“I was pretty confident he would get off, as confident as you can be with these processes, but I think we all saw that it was a rugby incident. I have not read the report yet as to how it got downgraded, but there wasn’t much in it for me.”

Wigglesworth is now backing Steward to be all stronger for his traumatic England experience. “He is absolutely buzzing now because he has gotten over it. But do you know what, he always, always reacts in the right way. You have seen now he has taken to international rugby, you saw how he took to Premiership rugby, he uses things.

“It will be a good experience for him to go through because you can’t have it all plain sailing. Like I say, he hadn’t done anything wrong, but he was on the back end of a lot of flak and a lot of stuff that came his way. But it will be another experience for him to go through and I have no doubt he will come through the other side better.”

Despite his own considerably lengthy career playing at club and country level, the soon-to-be 40-year-old Wigglesworth – who will start work as an England assistant under Steve Borthwick in time for the upcoming Rugby World Cup – was at a loss recalling an incident like the controversy that raged over the Steward red card for England.

“I don’t think so, I think that is why it made such noise, didn’t it, and why the result was what it was. We play an evasion sport that is played by incredible athletes at a high pace and things like this are going to happen.

“We are a really, really safe game at the minute. We look after players and that is exactly where we want to be but that one, I felt – and it has obviously been proved – that certain accidents happen on a rugby field, that is just one of those things.”