The All Blacks players Sam Cane and Malakai Fekitoa have both been cited for dangerous tackles arising from incidents in the Ireland-New Zealand game on Saturday. The first resulted in Robbie Henshaw being stretchered off and the second in a yellow card for Fekitoa.

Disciplinary hearings for both players, along with England’s Joe Launchbury and Argentina’s Nicolas Sanchez for incidents in their matches against Fiji and Scotland, will be held in the next two days in front of independent disciplinary committees of three.

Second Captains

It is understood that the match citing commissioner for the Ireland-New Zealand game, Bruce Kuklinski, became unwell on Friday evening and was unable to attend the match in person. He was sent up to 12 incidents to review, with all but one of those highlighting possible foul play by All Blacks players, the other being the incident which led to Cane suffering an ankle injury.

Although New Zealand head coach Steve Hansen has maintained that Cane and Henshaw collided heads, he did accept that Fekitoa’s one-armed hit was high and clumsy, and that he would be spoken to.

During the game, Rory Best, Jamie Heaslip and Conor Murray also complained of high hits to referee Jaco Peyper, who also yellow carded Aaron Smith for a comparatively innocuous incident when coming through on Conor Murray and kicking the ball.