Peter Jackson’s column: Justice has arrived late for victim Rhys Patchell

Rhys Patchell would have been appearing in his first European quarter-final yesterday had he not been bludgeoned out of it.  The Welshman’s assailant in Belfast last week, Nick Williams, will not be smashing anyone else on the rugby field for a while.  An eight-week ban for the No. 8 puts Ulster‘s Kiwi out of action until next season – cold comfort for the victim of his gratuitous brutality.
It left Patchell in such a crumpled heap that the medical team required almost 12 minutes of painstaking manoeuvres to inch him onto a stretcher and off to hospital.   They detained him there overnight amid an anxiety summed up by the ‘worried sick’ reaction of his non-playing Blues colleague, Sam Warburton.
Patchell cannot remember flying to Belfast, let alone the match.   The incident, six minutes into Ulster’s Pro 12 home win over Cardiff Blues, raises a question almost every bit as alarming as the foul deed itself: How did the officials get it so badly wrong?  Why did neither the Italian referee, Marius Mitrea, nor the Irish TMO, Alan Rogan, recognise Williams’ act for what it was – a red-card offence?
The medics’ meticulous work as they literally crawled around a prone Patchell fearful lest one wrong move caused irreparable damage meant the officials had ample opportunity to study the incident and arrive at a conclusion.
This is the dialogue which took place between Mitrea on the pitch and Rogan in the television van.
Mitrea to Rogan:  “He’s going to the head. Is that what you see? Is it a deliberate act or is it just accidental?”
Rogan:  “The arm goes into the head alright.”
Mitrea asks to see the relevant video again.  “Can you confirm if he connects with his elbow to the head?”
Rogan:  “It’s more his shoulder, upper arm.”
Mitrea:  “Ok. From what I can see from the screen it’s a yellow card unless you tell me it’s anything more.”
Rogan:  “No, I concur with that.”
Mitrea:  “It’s a yellow card.”
Rogan: “Yellow card.  No. 8.”
Williams gets ten minutes in the bin. It took a team of specialists 90 seconds longer simply to get Patchell off the ground and onto a stretcher.   It made a mockery of one of the time-honoured principles of justice, the one about the punishment fitting the crime.
Patchell was on the side of a maul when Williams joined in from the other side, driving a stiff right arm upwards which struck the Welshman on the side of the head, smashing him to the ground.
Another official on duty at Ravenhill, the citing commissioner, Eddie Wigglesworth, viewed it more seriously than the referee and the TMO.  One of the IRFU’s foremost officials, most recently as their director of rugby, Wigglesworth cited Williams.
A citing can be brought only if the commissioner decides that there is a red-card offence worthy of investigation, a case for the disciplinary chairman of Celtic Rugby, Roger Morris, a past-president of the Neath and Port Talbot Law Society.
His three-strong tribunal found Williams guilty, judging the offence sufficiently serious to justify a 16-week ban which they halved because of the player’s ‘exemplary previous disciplinary record’.
Retrospective justice is better than no justice but would Ulster still be second in the Pro 12 had they been reduced to 14 men for the 74 remaining minutes of what turned out to be a maximum-point home win?
Before Patchell could be carted off and after Mitrea had taken the soft option, the referee spoke to Blues’ captain Matthew Rees. “Just be aware when he (Williams) comes back.   No retaliation please. Cool heads. Ok?”
There wouldn’t have been any need for that had Mitrea sent Williams off for the night and not for ten meaningless minutes.  It made a mockery of the sport’s avowed declaration of taking a hard line on the kind of thuggery which will keep the innocent Patchell out of action for a fortnight, at the very least.
As for an official comment from Ulster rugby, there has been nothing but a deafening silence.
London Welsh have played 28 matches this season and lost every one – 18 in the Aviva Premiership, six in the European Challenge Cup and four in the LV=Cup.   Are they down in the dumps? Not one bit.
“You saw 23 guys who put their lives and souls into it for us today,” Rowland Phillips, the club’s new head coach, said in the wake of the 29-14 home defeat by Bath, their narrowest of a demoralising season. “The future is bright.”
Not in the Premiership, because they don’t have one.
They never had a realistic chance of survival largely because of the eleventh-hour nature of their promotion but then they faced exactly the same handicap before their first season among the elite two years ago.
They made an infinitely better fist of it then under the coaching of Lyn Jones.    They won five matches and virtually went the whole distance before succumbing to relegation.
Two seasons ago London Welsh under Jones conceded an average of three tries and 28 points per match.
This time round they have conceded an average of almost seven tries and 46 points per match.
And they still have four more to play.
*This article was first published in The Rugby Paper on April 5.