REVEALED: The Independent Judiciary Panel that rescinded Owen Farrell’s red card on the eve of the Rugby World Cup was made entirely of Australians, with a barrister and two …
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The Independent Judiciary Panel (IJP) that made the shock decision to rescind Owen Farrell’s red card against Wales was made up of three Australians, including two former Wallabies forwards.
Farrell was shown a red at Twickenham after a high tackle on Wales flanker Taine Basham, and chose to contest the decision with the World Cup on the horizon.
However, England fans – and the captain himself – were handed a huge reprieve when the IJP decided not to punish the fly-half, whose participation in at least the early stages of the competition had looked in doubt.
The panel’s chair, Adam Casselden, is a Sydney-based barrister, specialising in Commerical, Common and Transportation Law.
Among previous clients, Casselden can count some of Australia’s leading banks and insurers, State and Commonwealth departments and airlines.
Owen Farrell was shown a red card in Saturday’s friendly against Wales at Twickenham
The England captain was sent off following a high tackle on Welsh flanker Taine Basham
Sydney-based barrister Adam Casselden SC is the chair of the Independent Judiciary Panel
However he has also acted as the legal counsel for the Australian Rugby Union and the Football Federation of Australia, as well as being appointed the Judicial Officer for the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England and Wales.
Casselden was joined by former Australian international forwards John Langford and David Croft, who, as per an official press release, helped to consider all the available evidence and submissions from the player and his representative.
Langford is a former international rugby player, featuring for the Wallabies on four occasions in 1997, although none of them came in Australia curiously.
His first cap came in Deunedin against the All Blacks, before trips to Pretoria to face South Africa, Twickenham (England) and Murrayfield (Scotland).
The 55-year-old left his home country for Ireland, where he racked up 30 caps as a Munster lock, before retiring in 2001.
Croft’s tenure with the Wallabies yielded five caps at openside flanker, including a place in the 2003 Rugby World Cup squad.
Unlike Langford, though, Croft did manage to play in front of a home crowd, doing so in a 142-0 World Cup pool match against Namibia in Adelaide, having previously featured in Argentina, Ireland, England, Italy.
Represented by Richard Smith KC, mitigation for the player was found on the basis that Basham was pushed into Farrell’s path by hooker Jamie George.
David Croft (left) and John Langford (right) are former Australian internationals on the panel
His reprieve comes as a major surprise given Farrell has previously served three bans for dangerous tackling.
As such, the player is now free to take part in this weekend’s warm-up game against Ireland, ahead of the competition proper, which gets underway on September 8.
Farrell acknowledged that he had committed an act of foul play, although he denied that it was worthy of a red card, and after questioning the player in detail and hearing submissions from the player’s representative, the panel decided to rescind the card.
The Committee as such concluded that the Foul Play Review Officer – to whom a decision that is referred if it is unclear whether it warrants a red – was wrong, on the balance of probabilities, to upgrade the yellow card issued to the player to a red card.
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