Harlequins v Grenoble - Challenge Cup Semi Final

Friday 22nd April - 19:45 Stoop, BT Sport/beIN Sport



Match Officials

Referee - John Lacey (Ireland)
Touch Judge 1 - Marius Mitrea (Italy)
Touch Judge 2 - Peter Fitzgibbon (Ireland)
TMO - Jim Yuille (Scotland)
Citing Commissioner - Iain Goodall (Scotland)


Teams

Harlequins
15. Mike Brown; 14. Marland Yarde, 13. George Lowe, 12. Jamie Roberts, 11. Tim Visser; 10. Ben Botica, 9. Danny Care; 1. Joe Marler, 2. Joe Gray, 3. Adam Jones, 4. James Horwill, 5. Sam Twomey, 6. Chris Robshaw, 7. Luke Wallace, 8. Nick Easter
16. Dave Ward, 17. Mark Lambert, 18. Kyle Sinckler, 19. Charlie Matthews, 20. Jack Clifford, 21. Karl Dickson, 22. Nick Evans, 23. Ross Chisholm

Grenoble
15. Gio Aplon; 14. Xavier Mignot, 13. Chris Farrell, 12. Nigel Hunt, 11. Lucas Dupont; 10. Jonathan Wisniewski, 9. Charl McLeod; 1. Sona Taumalolo, 2. Arnaud Heguy, 3. Dayna Edwards, 4. Ben Hand, 5. James Percival, 6. Mahamadou Diaby, 7. Fabien Alexandre, 8. Steven Setephano
16. Loick Jammes, 17. Fabien Barcella, 18. Walter Desmaison, 19. Mathias Marie, 20. Henry Vanderglas, 21. James Hart, 22. Fabien Gengenbacher, 23. Fabrice Estebanez

Evans on the bench, happy days! I thought he was out for the season.

Good strong team from Quins.

We just need to bring that potential off the paper and on to the pitch, simple gameplan. Forward carry hard, quick ruck ball and run fast at gaps. No silly kicks, no silly passes, and please look for your support (Brown).

Grenoble will be up for this one - they aren't going to get relegated and are probably going to miss out on automatic Champions Cup qualification.

This is their one chance to qualify so I suspect, for once, we'll see a French team that actually wants to win this cup!

Like 'quins they play a positive brand of rugby so should hopefully be a decent game.

30-6 to Quins not long left

Heat of the moment man at it again

Let him off for cowardly digs like the one on Rob Evans and he's bound to try similar again.

RiscaGame wrote:Heat of the moment man at it again

Let him off for cowardly digs like the one on Rob Evans and he's bound to try similar again.

Yes that is going to be a story but you know what it isn't the only one

No, you're right. O'Shea stupidly defending his man is another story too. Sadly, I'm sure there are other things worthy of talking about like Jamie Roberts' awful dive, or Nick Evans' try scoring return, but unfortunately Marler doing stupid things is always going to be the main topic of discussion until he grows up.

Good game, good win, great atmosphere at the stadium even in the rain.

Happy days

RiscaGame wrote:Heat of the moment man at it again

Let him off for cowardly digs like the one on Rob Evans and he's bound to try similar again.

A bit of a Basil Fawlty elbow about it rather than a Flannery scythe, imo of course.

Happy with that, decent result. Don't think there was anything in that Marler incident, just handbags, but still think EJ should tell him to cut it out and drop him for the summer tour.

Good to see Lowe getting back to his best.

Just for reference purposes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIZSZ9sC9tY

Definitely at the 'handbags' end but not smart

Lowe played really well, it was great to see the team as a whole go up a gear in the second half rather then have the usual 50th minute collapse that we've seen recently when they're in the lead.

Thought the pack as a whole put in a great performance. So much better at the lineout, the scrums wrecked the opposition at times and defensively the forwards were very physical.

yappysnap wrote:Thought the pack as a whole put in a great performance. So much better at the lineout, the scrums wrecked the opposition at times and defensively the forwards were very physical.

If Adam Jones was playing on anything other than reputation you could have absolutely creamed them at scrum time. However he did not have the go forward of Marler and Gray which ended up putting pressure on the No8s

Thought Marler had a really good game in the scrum and around the park. Can't see Eddie Jones getting too worked up by this incident given he made Hartley his captain, so assuming he doesn't get a significant ban (he shouldn't) and he should tour.

Very good win for Quins. Grenoble were rocked early by a couple of injuries, but fair play to Quins they controlled the whole game and deserved the margin of victory.

Sounds like Jones has learned how to play rugby again. Too bad a Welsh team doesn't have him in the form he's in now. Good to see Quins' best player (Roberts) on the score sheet again.

LondonTiger wrote:

yappysnap wrote:Thought the pack as a whole put in a great performance. So much better at the lineout, the scrums wrecked the opposition at times and defensively the forwards were very physical.

If Adam Jones was playing on anything other than reputation you could have absolutely creamed them at scrum time. However he did not have the go forward of Marler and Gray which ended up putting pressure on the No8s

Yea at the time it was a bit of an odd call starting Jones over Collier as Jones hadn't played in weeks and Collier had been part of the front row that brutalised Sarries last week. Thankfully it didn't really matter in the end and Synckler made a big impact when he came on. I can see Jones retiring to focus on coaching at the end of the season.

Also I thought Lacey was pretty good, right from the off he set his stall out that just about anything goes and didn't deviate, and the teams played to that. Probably not quite how WR want the game reffed but it worked.

lostinwales wrote:Just for reference purposes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIZSZ9sC9tY

Definitely at the 'handbags' end but not smart

Not handbags just a dirty little cheap shot

It is soft from Marler. The thing is, these soft things keep mounting up. Soft little dig on Rob Evans. Soft little kick in the head. The guy is clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Even his twitter bio, where he has second most hated man in Wales behind Mike Brown is pretty ill advised. He would be better off just concentrating on the basics like scrummaging straight, rather than the faux hardman or the panto villain image.

I didn't think he was childish enough to put that in his Twitter bio, I haven't seen it yet as I don't follow him. Doesn't he realise that him and Brown are disliked by some people in Ireland and Scotland as well as Wales?

RiscaGame wrote:It is soft from Marler. The thing is, these soft things keep mounting up. Soft little dig on Rob Evans. Soft little kick in the head. The guy is clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Even his twitter bio, where he has second most hated man in Wales behind Mike Brown is pretty ill advised. He would be better off just concentrating on the basics like scrummaging straight, rather than the faux hardman or the panto villain image.

It is not soft, just rather sad.

LondonTiger wrote:

RiscaGame wrote:It is soft from Marler. The thing is, these soft things keep mounting up. Soft little dig on Rob Evans. Soft little kick in the head. The guy is clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Even his twitter bio, where he has second most hated man in Wales behind Mike Brown is pretty ill advised. He would be better off just concentrating on the basics like scrummaging straight, rather than the faux hardman or the panto villain image.

It is not soft, just rather sad.

It was just so unnecessary. If the fallout from the England - Wales game hasn't taught him that you can't get away with much in a televised game, then you wonder what will, especially as this was his first game back and he was always going to be under scrutiny.

I hope this time we don't hear the defence of, 'oh, but he's a nice guy off the pitch,' which is clearly irrelevant if he keeps being a d!ck on it.

Has the incident actually been reported or cited yet even?

bedfordwelsh wrote:Has the incident actually been reported or cited yet even?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2016/04/23/joe-marler-awaits-verdict-on-citing-for-kicking-grenoble-hooker/

Citing commissioner Iain Goodall has 50 hours from the start of Friday’s match in which to make a decision about a citing, which is widely expected, and Marler will be sweating over another ban which could see him miss the Challenge Cup final in Lyon on May 13 and possibly England’s three-Test tour of Australia in June.

PenfroPete wrote:

bedfordwelsh wrote:Has the incident actually been reported or cited yet even?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2016/04/23/joe-marler-awaits-verdict-on-citing-for-kicking-grenoble-hooker/

Citing commissioner Iain Goodall has 50 hours from the start of Friday’s match in which to make a decision about a citing, which is widely expected, and Marler will be sweating over another ban which could see him miss the Challenge Cup final in Lyon on May 13 and possibly England’s three-Test tour of Australia in June.

Cheers Pete

Thought Marler was clearly trying to ruck the ball... he just didn't realise the ball was already 10 yards further down the field at the actual breakdown.

If it was indeed something sinister surely British Telecom Sport would have shown the footage to the TMO at the time. They wouldn't deliberately hold back footage of a player for one of their sides (they do have a major contract with PRL that Harlequins are part of, I can't think of any vested interest they would have in Grenoble doing well) in order to ensure that one specific team kept 15 men on the field for an entire 80 minutes. First to ensure the outcome to one specific side then drop the images during the feature (but after any immediate action could be taken) in order to pump up their controversy angle and entertain the viewers.

Marler won't get cited, as CoS has already stated that he struck an opponent with his shin and not his boot...... and that makes it fine.

as i mentioned on another thread. it was less bad than mcintyre's boot to itoje's head which only got a yellow.

and a citing can only be for something that should have been a red.

now i wouldnt mind if marler got cited, as i think any kicks to the head deserve a red, but ffs where is the consistency if he does get cited?

imo mcintyre should have got straight red, and marler cited and 2 game ban.

quinsforever wrote:as i mentioned on another thread. it was less bad than mcintyre's boot to itoje's head which only got a yellow.

and a citing can only be for something that should have been a red.

now i wouldnt mind if marler got cited, as i think any kicks to the head deserve a red, but ffs where is the consistency if he does get cited?

imo mcintyre should have got straight red, and marler cited and 2 game ban.

Is that right, I thought any incident of foul play good be cited not ones that only warranted a red.

Its not the ONLY thing that happened this weekend...

but so far the only footage I have seen has been from the same angle. It does seem that it was Marler's shin but it would be nice to see it from a different angle which should confirm that, and should also confirm that he did make contact and it had any kind of effect. The worst thing is the way that Marler swings his leg in

It does seem dumb but at the bottom end of any range of offenses. The closest similar thing I can think of is Hartley's pre RWC head butt that again wasn't much of anything apart from stupid but which did lead to a ban.

bedfordwelsh -

Citing commissioner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In rugby union, a citing commissioner is an independent official, appointed by the competition organizer, the union in which the match is taking place, or the World Rugby, who is responsible for citing players who commit any act of foul play which in the opinion of the Citing Commissioner warranted the player concerned being Ordered Off (Red card).

Citing Commissioners may cite Players for an act(s) of foul play where such act(s) may have been detected by the referee or assistant referee and which may have been the subject of referee action. A Citing Commissioner may not cite a Player for an act(s) of Foul Play in respect of which the Player has been Ordered Off save where the Ordering Off is as a result of two yellow cards. A Player in that situation may also be cited for the act(s) of Foul Play which resulted in either or both yellow card(s).

Citing Commissioners may cite a Player if he has been Temporarily Suspended (Yellow card). Such citing may be made in respect of the incident(s) for which the Player was Temporarily Suspended or otherwise. A citing complaint by a Citing Commissioner must be sent in writing to the nominated officer of the Host Union or Tournament Organiser responsible for the Match in which the incident that is the subject of the citing complaint occurred within ordinarily a minimum of 12 hours and no later than a maximum of 48 hours of the conclusion of the Match.

Teams may bring offences to the attention of the citing commissioner for review. The citing commissioner may cite a player even if the referee has already dealt with the issue (except where the player has been Ordered Off). Where there is no Citing Commissioner appointed, each team participating in a Match, or any of its authorised officials, or its Union, may cite: (i) a Player(s) for an act(s) of alleged Foul Play committed during that Match provided that such act(s) have not been detected by the Match Officials; (ii) a Player for more than one incident of alleged Foul Play in the same Match; and (iii) more than one Player in any Match. Citing complaints must be notified within 48 hours of the conclusion of the match

A player who is cited is called to a hearing to show cause why he should not be treated as having been sent off for the alleged offence. The player is entitled to be represented. The hearing usually takes place before three independent persons nominated by the union or the competition organizer, and is generally convened within a week of the match in question. If the offence is proven, the panel issues a penalty, usually in the form of a suspension for a number of weeks.

quins,

Cheers.

So bringing up the Marler/Evans incident again then should that have even been cited? I didn't think it warranted a red so should he have been cited fo it?

bedfordwelsh wrote:quins,

Cheers.

So bringing up the Marler/Evans incident again then should that have even been cited?  I didn't think it warranted a red so should he have been cited fo it?

I guess you could claim that a full on punch on someone trapped on the ground could/should be a red card, but that obviously wasn't quite what happened.

Is there anything O'Shea won't defend ?

Do you not think that players like Heguy and Itoje are deliberately holding onto players well away from the ball and well after it has gone to provoke a reaction?  I think what Marler did was wrong, but it was a reaction to an act of deliberate foul play.  I think whatever ban Marler gets and he should get a ban, that Heguy should get the same, otherwise you are just encouraging players to do this.  Likewise Itoje.

This needs to be stamped out of the game.