Newcastle’s South African lock Adriaan Fondse has been suspended for one week following a red card he received for punching Delon Armitage last weekend. Armitage himself wasn’t squeaky clean, as he made an ugly looking tackle later in the game.
Fondse will miss Newcastle’s Aviva Premiership game against Leicester Tigers this weekend after he was sent off for a cheap shot jab in the face of a grinning Armitage. Unfortunately the camera angle we got to see didn’t show it too clearly, but it the touchjudge was right there.
A disciplinary hearing was held last night and a one match ban was deemed sufficient.
Armitage, who never seems to be far away from a news headline, caused a bit of a stir later in the game with a big shoulder shot on Newcastle center James Fitzpatrick. It looked quite high and Fitzpatrick took a while to get up, which the Falcons players clearly weren’t too pleased with.
The London Irish fullback escaped punishment at the time, and appears to have not been cited for the incident, which looked fairly similar to the hit he made on Chris Paterson during the World Cup (see related posts below). That tackle earned him a one week suspension.
You can view both the Fondse punch and the Armitage hit in the video below. Do you think the citing officers got this one correct, suspending Fondse for one week and ignoring the Armitage tackle?
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