Munster Rugby showed further signs of their remarkable improvement under new head coach Graham Rowntree in the final pool round of the 2022/23 Heineken Champions Cup.
On the road against one of the tournament favourites in French giants Toulouse, Munster went toe-to-toe with their fancied opponents.
Coming agonisingly close to causing the upset losing 20 -16 , Munster provided further evidence that they are nearing a return to the top table of European teams.
Buoyed by a new generation of upcoming talent led by flyhalf Jack Crowley, last year’s losing quarterfinalists will be a tough out for the Cell C Sharks in the round of 16.
In what has become a long-standing rumour in world rugby, an interesting moment in which the French the television producers did not produce the necessary angles for an incident came up once again.
As Munster were in the midst of mounting their comeback, giant Toulouse secondrow Richie Arnold collided with Munster flyhalf Joey Carbery.
Immediately Munster supporters were calling for the incident to be reviewed yet the match officials did not appear to take note of the hit.
As Carbery looks to release the ball, Arnold appears to make head-on-head contact. Fortunately, both players bounced back to their feet.
TMO in France…….same every year….pointless even talking about it at this stage. Its a hit on head and at least deserved a second look….but no, play on! pic.twitter.com/wlKwncGKqH
— Anthony Morrissey (@AntMo1977) January 22, 2023
Speaking on the incident, former Munster and Ireland player Alan Quinlan spoke on the “Off the Ball” podcast this morning.
Prompted by host Ger Gilroy who said, ‘for those who haven’t seen it, Joey Carbery was hit very hard. Was it a legitimate tackle?’
‘I don’t think so, I think if you watch the footage of it. When I saw it live, I immediately expected a review of that’ Quinlan responded.
‘Obviously Joey Carbery gets back up, you’d need a closer look to see if it was chest first and then it came up to the head. Joey Carbery’s head sort of whiplashed back first but he got right back up.’
‘It was pretty reckless and dangerous from Richie Arnold’ Quinlan concluded.
‘Are there enough wrapping of arms?’ Gilroy asked.
‘No there wasn’t, if it’s not a high tackle there are no arms wrapped there at all.’
‘He was shooting out of the line and I just honestly don’t know why players are continuing to do this? Maybe you get away with it but you’re just really rolling the dice and taking a chance.’
‘Of course, you want to get at opposition players with the ball and put in a big but we are talking about behaviours in the game and you’re in a really risky situation there.’
‘When you look at the video of this, you need to see more replays of the incident.’
‘ I have done loads of games in France (as a commentator) and you have no control of the pictures and they won’t play anything that goes against the home team ever.’
‘It’s frustrating and sometimes when you’re in commentary you want them to show replays when it needs to be looked at but the directors there won’t do that.’ Quinlan concluded on the incident.
‘They played Ben Healy’s one didn’t they, very innocuous. His elbow hits the chest first, it comes up and is a penalty at most. It was a really really harsh yellow card.’
Quinlan continued on to say that the TMO should’ve looked further incident. For the full interview see below.
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