Eye-gouging (rugby union)

Eye-gouging is a serious offence in rugby union where a player uses hands or fingers to inflict pain in an opponent's eyes. The game's laws refer to it as "contact with eyes or the eye area of an opponent" but such incidents are usually referred to as "eye-gouging" among players and in the media.

The laws of rugby union, as written by World Rugby, define foul play as: "Anything a player does within the playing enclosure that is against the letter and spirit of the Laws of the Game. It includes obstruction, unfair play, repeated infringements, dangerous play and misconduct which is prejudicial to the Game". Specifically, they state that "A player must not do anything that is dangerous to the opponent".

WR Regulations provide for punishment for contact with eyes or the eye area of an opponent.

Although this is usually called "eye-gouging" by the media, fans and players, the term "gouging" is not used in World Rugby's laws or regulations, which do list degrees of gravity of the offence. World Rugby themselves have used the term in a 2009 statement, when the body was known as the International Rugby Board (IRB): "The IRB are firmly of the view there is no place in rugby for illegal or foul play and the act of eye-gouging is particularly heinous".

Following two separate high-profile test match incidents, involving Schalk Burger and Sergio Parisse, during the same week in June 2009, the IRB stated that it would review the sanction structure for this type of offence "in order to send out the strongest possible message that such acts will not be tolerated".

The regulations provide a scale of seriousness:

The maximum sanction is a 156-week (3 year) ban.

In sevens, bans are officially expressed in numbers of matches instead of weeks, reflecting the schedule of the Sevens World Series for men and women, as well as other major events for sevens teams.

In the early days of rugby, eye gouging was commonplace and happened mainly in the scrum due to a lack of control by referees and the opportunity the scrum offered for players to commit foul play due to the way the scrum is formed. The rising amount of foul play involving eye gouging eventually lead to the founding of the Rugby Football Union to control rugby and to reduce the amount of foul play. Eye-gouging then began to disappear from the early game as the laws of rugby became stricter due to English public school students starting to play rugby. After then foul play including eye-gouging became largely unspoken of and rugby authorities often ignored complaints of eye-gouging. This was due to authorities expecting players to deal with it themselves as it was claimed to be part of the nature of the game and was often viewed as a joke. In 1992, Richard Loe made contact with Greg Cooper's eyes while playing in the National Provincial Championship and was banned for nine months after a nine-hour deliberation by the New Zealand Rugby Union's judicial committee. This was viewed by observers as a turning point in attitudes towards eye-gouging and punishments for eye-gouging became stricter. According to John Daniell, a New Zealand lock who played for nearly a decade in France, eye gouging is fairly common and considered "a way of life" in French rugby, where it is known as "la fourchette".

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Wikipedia