Doyle: Wessels and Furlong testicle-grab cases were different

Owen Doyle, the former head of Irish referees, insists the testicle-grabbing incidents involving Tadhg Furlong and Jan-Hendrik Wessels should not be treated alike, and the difference, he says, lies in the evidence.

Doyle made his comments in his Irish Times column. Furlong, the Leinster prop, was cleared of foul play by a disciplinary panel last week. The citing followed an alleged grab on Munster's Gavin Coombes in a URC fixture played in Dublin.

In the first half, Coombes flagged it with referee Andrew Brace, yet TMO Colin Stanley could not find clear footage to support a call. Doyle defended citing commissioner Peter Ferguson for citing Furlong and said Coombes should not be criticised.

Doyle said Furlong could have argued that any contact was inadvertent, which would have made a conviction hard without clear evidence. In the Wessels case, he said, Murphy's immediate retaliation made it seem beyond reasonable doubt that something nasty had occurred, which in Furlong's case it did not.

Murphy's red card for punching Wessels in retaliation was later rescinded. Doyle wrote: "Murphy’s reaction – what all of us would have done – was later adjudicated not to have reached the threshold for red"

He also called for lawmakers to consider outlawing the act of putting an arm between an opponent's legs near the groin to lift or destabilise a player, on health and safety grounds. "It’s a clearing out technique which the game does not need."

Any such change would fall under the Laws of Rugby, and more laws and refereeing news is on RuckBee.