'Historic day': AFL makes Tassie's dream a reality<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\nEtzebeth was red-carded at the end of the record 73-0 win in Cardiff after a scuffle with Alex Mann, where he was caught on video with his right thumb in Mann's left eye.<\/p>\n
It was the first red card of Etzebeth's 13-year international career. The two-time Rugby World Cup winner has played the most tests for the Springboks with 141.<\/p>\n
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The gouge was determined to be intentional by an independent disciplinary committee. Etzebeth pleaded guilty and apologised.<\/p>\n
Regarding a sanction, the panel started at 18 weeks and reduced it by six weeks taking into consideration his previous disciplinary record.<\/p>\n
He was the third player to be red-carded during the Springboks' five-match unbeaten tour of Europe in November. Lood de Jager was suspended for four matches but Franco Mostert's red card was rescinded.<\/p>\n
The criticism came in thick and fast for Etzebeth following the ugly incident.<\/p>\n
"\ufeffIt's possible that Alex Mann did something to set Eben Etzebeth off. But there is no excuse for a player of his experience to react in that manner. He deserves a big ban.," journalist Jared Wright said via X, also labelling it as "brainless" in another post.<\/p>\n
UK reporter Charlie Herbert also slammed the act.<\/p>\n
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"How on earth can you be 73-0 up with two minutes to go and still have the horrible anger within you to gouge an opponent's eye? Eben Etzebeth's a nasty piece of work\ufeff."<\/p>\n
Springboks captain Siya Kolisi defended Etzebeth after the initial incident.<\/p>\n
"I'm sure he didn't mean to do that on purpose," Kolisi said.<\/p>\n
"You go for an eye gouge you know what happens after that. He said sorry to the guy already but I don't want that to be the highlight of the day. It's been a good day."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African great Eben Etzebeth has been suspended for 12 matches for an eye gouge against Wales last weekend. The ban covers matches for the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":482184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=482180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482188,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482180\/revisions\/482188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/482184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=482180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=482180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=482180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}