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The original 13 weeks suspension was imposed following an incident of foul play in the RBS 6 Nations match between Wales and Italy in February.
The three-man independent Appeal Committee, chaired by Rod McKenzie (Scotland) and also comprising HHJ Jeff Blackett (England) and Richard McGhee (Scotland), rejected the player's appeal to reduce the sanction to a lower-end offence from the mid-range originally applied.
The Committee found that the offence, for making contact with an opponent's eyes contrary to Law 10.4 (k), merited a top end entry point in the IRB list of sanctions, i.e. a minimum of 24 weeks. The Committee applied the same percentage of net mitigation as used at the original hearing and imposed a suspension of 17 weeks, up to and including 23 June, 2008.
The only successful element of the appeal was to bring the date of commencement of the suspension back to 26 February, 2008.
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