The Stade Français scrum-half, Julien Dupuy, had the six-month ban imposed on him last month for eye-gouging reduced by one week on appeal tonight, paving the way for his club to take legal action to allow him to play in France long before his suspension ends at the end of May.
Dupuy, who forced his way into the France team in the autumn having got on to the international radar with Leicester last season, will miss the rest of the club season and the Six Nations after gouging the Ireland flanker, Stephen Ferris, during a Heineken Cup group match against Ulster at Ravenhill last month. The one-week reduction gives him a chance of being included in France's summer tour, which starts with a Test against South Africa in June.
The three-man appeal panel, which met in Heathrow this afternoon after the Stade delegation had been delayed by the weather, found that the six-month ban, handed out by the independent judicial officer appointed by European Rugby Cup Ltd, Jeff Blackett, had been determined in error, but only a minor one.
The panel said that Blackett, who had set Dupuy's ban at 40 weeks only to take 16 off for mitigating factors, had taken into account the need for deterrence when determining that Dupuy's offence merited top-level entry in terms of seriousness rather than as an aggravating factor. But the trio agreed with Blackett that the two counts of making contact with Ferris's eye merited a top-end entry, which meant a minimum six-month ban.
French law decrees that because the ban was imposed outside the country it has to be upheld by the Ligue Nationale de Rugby, the body that runs the professional club game across the Channel. If it decides that 24 weeks is too draconian, any reduction would mean that Dupuy could play in France while remaining banned from the Heineken Cup.
If it upholds the suspension, and it will be under pressure from the French Rugby Federation to do so following the crackdown on gouging by the International Rugby Board, which is chaired by a Frenchman, Bernard Lapasset, Stade are likely to turn to the French courts, which have traditionally frowned on the long suspensions handed down in rugby, deeming them an infringement on the right to work.
The Stade president, Max Guazzini, last month hit out at the six-month ban, saying it was an injustice and anti-French, hinting he would take the matter further if Dupuy's appeal failed. A year ago the Perpignan hooker, Marius Tincu, won his case in a French court after being banned for 18 weeks for gouging during a Heineken Cup match against Ospreys.
Tincu was able to resume his club career, prompting the IRB to launch an inquiry. If Dupuy succeeds in following Tincu, it would throw the Board's disciplinary system, which sees players banned from all competitions simultaneously regardless of whether they committed the offence in a Test match, a cross-border tournament or a domestic league, into chaos. It would also technically make him available to play for France in the Six Nations, in Paris at least, and the national coach, Marc Lièvremont, said last month that he regarded the ban as excessive and disproportionate.
