England happy with Mark Cueto’s nine-week ban – Rugby news
Auckland, New Zealand will be the England’s base station for their campaign to recapture the Rugby World Cup trophy.
England is expected to stay in New Zealand for approximately two months after landing in the New Zealand during the last week of the August 2011. Further to this announcement, good news for the English team is the clearance of their Full Back Ben Foden by
the RFU.
Although no ban was handed over to him, however he did receive a police caution for his actions during March 27, which have been interpreted as criminal damage offense.
Often said, good and bad things go side by side. Well here again is example for you, as English have relatively good news for the day with their base station being confirmed, and their Full Back escaping a possible RFU ban, England’s winger Mark John Cueto
has been handed over the nine-week ban.
The 31-year-old, English winger was pleaded guilty of gouging the eye of the Christian Day. The incident took place during the encounter of the Sale Sharks with the Northampton Saints as part of the Aviva Premiership on April 2 at Franklin Gardens. Both
Cueto and Day are former Sale teammates and the incident of the gouging was happened as both were fighting to take the ball.
During the match, it happened quiet briskly however, later footages revealed that the Cueto has intentionally placed his hand on the Day’s face and his fingers apparently swindling the Day’s eye. This act of digging, forcing either eye or eye area is termed
as gouging and falls under the category of the mid range offense that leads to 18 weeks of suspension.
Cueto will not feature in any remaining games for Sale Sharks as the Sharks have already handed him the ban for six week. Cueto did not contest the charge at RFU hearing and would be happy with the nine-week suspension, as the full 18-week suspension would
definitely result in disqualifying him from playing against the Wales and Ireland. A nine-week suspension has also enabled the Mark Cueto to play England’s three-rugby world cup warm up matches in August.
Keeping in view the overall picture both Mark Cueto and English’ coach Martin Johnson will be happy with the nine-week suspension, as it did not heavily have an effect on their world cup preparation.
England will start their World Cup preparation with their Training Camp due to start on 20 June. By that time, Mark Cueto would have served his nine-week suspension particularly as the ban has been backdated to 4 April. It is worthwhile to mention that on
4 April 2011 Sale Sharks handed over their internal six-week ban to Mark Cueto on the same offense.
At the end of the day, England will definitely be happy to see how the things have shaped up.
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