England will be without lock Courtney Lawes for their next two Pool B games in the Rugby World Cup after he was cited and subsequently suspended for two weeks after he was found guilty of kneeing Argentina’s Mario Ledesma.
Lawes will miss out on England’s next two matches against, against Georgia and Romania respectively, but will be available for their crunch meeting with Scotland. His offence was found to be in the lower end, which is usually a three week punishment, but his previous clean record and the remorse he showed meant that it was lowered to just the two weeks off.
Hooker Steve Thompson admitted that the England came were relieved that he will be available for the Scotland match, while coach Martin Johnson has said that he felt Lawes was simply trying to get across to make a try saving tackle.
“They obviously saw it a bit differently, but the good thing for us squad-wise is we have some very good players who can come in,” said Johnson.
The incident occured just a minute after Lawes made a huge hit on center Gonzalo Tiesi, which resulted in him being rules out of the rest of the tournament with knee ligament damage.
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