Burning Issue: Should Paul O’Connell have been cited for kicking Dave Kearney in the head?

Paul O’Connell will face no punishment after his controversial kick to Dave Kearney’s head on Saturday evening, but should he have got off scot-free. Two JOEs argue the case.

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Sean Nolan says... whatever about a ban, there is no doubt that Paul O’Connell should have had to explain his actions to the disciplinary body.

Has one swing of a boot ever caused as much fuss in Irish sport? Munster hosting Leinster in any competition is always a big deal but the only reason we are still talking about this game four days later is not because of the result, but because of what Paul O’Connell did.

The facts are that the Munster lock kicked Dave Kearney in the head as he lay on the ground. Whether the ball was there or not, whether he made contact with it first or not, whether he connected with his shin or whether he intended to or not the only fact we know is that Kearney took a savage blow to the head.

We don’t know for sure, but I am 100 per cent convinced, that O’Connell didn’t intend to harm Kearney but he did. And the reason for that was that he was reckless and didn’t put his fellow player’s safety ahead of getting a boot to the ball. Rugby players, above all sports, have a duty of care to each other on the pitch. Cross that line and the ref, and usually the opposition too, is there to sort it out. If they miss it, that’s where the citing commissioner comes in.

As a rule, the way rugby deals with discipline is pretty good. Efficient, clear and fast, it makes the GAA’s disciplinary system look byzantine, which it is by the way. Just look at the Peter Stringer spitting incident from the Amlin the other week. Within days Jerome Fillol was facing a 14-week stretch cooling his heels and while we would all have liked him to receive longer, it was at least dealt with by the authorities.

That’s the main beef we have with the O’Connell incident. The decision by citing commissioner Eddie Walsh was that what the Munster man did was careless, not reckless. It sounds like splitting hairs to us and it denied all parties involved the chance of a disciplinary hearing where the ins and outs could be trashed out.

Leinster coach Joe Schmidt was steaming yesterday, partly because he is facing at least two weeks without Kearney, but mainly because the incident wasn’t going to be examined fully, setting a precedent for further careless/reckless play.

If a hearing had taken place, and O’Connell had explained his case, his lack of intent and his good record to date etc then we’re sure he would have been let off and we would all be able to move on. Now it hangs over the game, leaving a slightly malodorous air over our domestic game’s biggest rivalry.

The, let’s just call it ‘impassioned’, arguing of the incident by both sides has been bitter and divisive. It could all have been largely avoided if the correct procedure had been adhered to.

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Conor Heneghan says... Before I go about defending Paul O’Connell and the decision not to cite him for THAT kick to Dave Kearney’s head, I should point out that I fully agree with Joe Schmidt’s comments that Kearney seems to be the ‘forgotten man’ in the discussion about what happened in Thomond Park on Saturday.

Kearney was the man who was carted off the field unconscious, who had to undergo CT scans in hospital and is likely to spend some time on the sidelines as a result of feeling the force of whatever part of O’Connell’s leg it was – that shouldn’t really be an issue – that connected with his head.

Yet, his name has barely been mentioned in the debate about whether O’Connell deserved to be cited or not, a debate that, unfortunately, at times seems to have been divided purely along tribal lines rather than being looked at from an objective standpoint.

Also, Schmidt was entirely vindicated in raising questions about the process where O’Connell was let off the hook and concerns that it will affect the relationship between them should Schmidt become Ireland coach should never come into it.

For now, Schmidt is Leinster coach and Kearney is a Leinster player and his concern, rightfully, is for the players under his care. Besides, we doubt O’Connell would be petty enough to hold a grudge and Schmidt after all was not criticising the player – he couldn’t speak highly enough of him, in fact – but how it came about that he was cleared of any wrongdoing for what happened.

By now, you, dear reader, like everyone else, have probably seen the incident a hundred times and admittedly, it doesn’t get any prettier on repeated viewing. The problem is that while we watch it on YouTube and on television replays and get to see it in slow motion, O’Connell didn’t have that luxury.

He thought, rightly or wrongly, that the ball was there to be won and as Brian O’Driscoll will readily testify, when that thought is in O’Connell’s mind nobody’s going to stop him, whether you happen to be on the same team as him or not.

With the benefit of hindsight and the aforementioned slow-motion replays O’Connell will probably admit that he shouldn’t have tried to fly-hack the ball and would have been better off diving on it, but he didn’t have the benefit of hindsight; it was a case of shoot first and ask questions later, a mindset possessed by 99 per cent of rugby players.

O’Connell’s guilt depended on whether or not the offence was worthy of a red card and citing commissioner Eddie Walsh deemed that it wasn’t. Yes, it was unfortunate and in Walsh’s words ‘careless’ but there was certainly no intent and no malice on O’Connell’s part, bad and all as the incident looked and as serious the injury that Kearney suffered as a consequence.

O’Connell says he didn’t fear a citing until he saw the slow-mo replay because he knew in his own head what he had done and although I wouldn’t necessarily agree with his view that opinions of what happened depended on whether you are aligned to red or blue, I most definitely wouldn’t doubt that it was entirely accidental and, unfortunately, sometimes accidents, and pretty bad ones at that, happen on a rugby pitch.

Was O’Connell careless? Yes. Were Leinster entitled to raise questions about the citing process? Yes. Did O’Connell deserve to be cited? In my opinion, the right decision has been made.