Cribb banned for six weeks

8.30pm

North Harbour captain Ron Cribb has been banned from all rugby for six weeks.

A New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) judicial hearing imposed the sentence on Cribb in Wellington tonight.

Former All Blacks No 8 Cribb appeared before the hearing after being citing for a stamping incident in the NPC match against Canterbury at Albany last Saturday.

As a result of the incident Canterbury wing Ryan Glover was forced from the field and later required 14 stitches to head wounds.

NZRU complaints review officer Roger Drummond reviewed the citing and decided the incident was serious enough to go before a judicial hearing.

Judicial committee chairman Bruce Squire, QC, said the committee ruled Cribb's actions to be reckless but not deliberate.

At the hearing, the judicial committee - comprising Squire, Mattie Blackburn and Brian Coomber - viewed a videotape of the incident and heard evidence from Cribb.

Cribb said the contact he made with Glover's head was accidental. He said he had no intention of injuring Glover and what he did was entirely inadvertent.

The committee was satisfied Cribb had not deliberately brought his boot into contact with Glover's head.

However, in a statement, the committee said Cribb's actions were "quite reckless and unnecessarily exposed those players (lying in the ruck) to risk of injury."

The committee was satisfied that, in that sense, Cribb was guilty of the breach of the laws of the game under which he had been cited.

The Committee considered it was a relatively bad case of its kind.

Cribb's North Harbour teammate Troy Flavell received a three-month suspension for a similar incident in a Super 12 match when playing for the Blues earlier this year.

The committee said there was a significant difference in the culpability of Cribb from that of Flavell, who was ruled to have used his boot deliberately.

Cribb's suspension will apply in both the 2003 and 2004 calendar years.

Because his suspension comes towards the end of the 2003 domestic season, the committee imposed the ban to apply to next year also.

Cribb was suspended from all rugby from October 8, 2003, to October 31, 2003, and was further suspended from playing in an invitation match in Australia to be played at some point during the World Cup.

He was also suspended from March 10 to March 31 next year.

The committee imposed the penalty in this way in order to avoid the six weeks' suspension, or a significant part of it, being a meaningless penalty.

Cribb refused to talk to waiting media after the hearing.

- NZPA