Ireland flies in legal heavyweight

WORLD CUP REACTION: Ireland is flying a specialist lawyer into Japan in a bid to keep Bundee Aki’s World Cup alive.

Connacht centre Aki was sent off for a high tackle on UJ Seuteni in Ireland’s 47-5 win over Samoa on Saturday, that booked Joe Schmidt’s men a World Cup quarter-final.

But the Irish Rugby Football Union has confirmed that William Fry partner Derek Hegarty is en route to Japan, to act for the union in any eventual hearing.

Defence coach Andy Farrell said Ireland is still awaiting referee Nic Berry’s official match report, but admitted his personal sympathy for any player who is sent off.

“I don’t know anyone in world rugby who wants to do anything like that on a pitch.

“I’ll keep my powder dry until after the process; we haven’t had the referee’s report yet, so we’ll wait until after that.

“We believe there will be a hearing in the next 36 hours, so we’ll see how that goes.

“Reaction stuff is very tough to judge, you can slow everything down and everyone has a comment.

“I’d like to think there’s a bit of feel in and around the whole situation.”

Ireland boss Schmidt said Aki was “devastated” to have been sent off against his fatherland Samoa in Saturday’s seven-try win in Fukuoka.

Previous red cards have been met with three-match suspensions at this World Cup, however, and Aki might suffer the same fate – which would rule him out of any further action at the tournament.

Former Terenure scrumhalf Hegarty heads up the sports division at Dublin firm William Fry, who advised the IRFU on its bid to host World Cup 2023.

Schmidt said he would be “pretty disappointed” if Aki’s red card turned into a suspension for him to miss the remainder of the World Cup.

While assistant coach Farrell remained fairly tight-lipped on views on Aki, the former dual-code international admitted Ireland were delighted to have reached the World Cup’s knockout phase.

“It’s all about moving onto the next round, which we’re pretty pleased with, to get a chance to go for a quarter-final,” said Farrell.

“We’re pretty pleased with how we dealt with and managed the game against Samoa. It was tricky enough conditions.

“I don’t think watching on TV at home you’d have been able to tell, but it was very blustery out there and I thought we managed the conditions pretty well.

“We played a good bit of territory in the first half and got a good bit of reward of that.

“It was tough playing against the wind in the second half, but then we managed to stay in the Samoa 22 for a good while.

“So overall we’re very pleased to be sat here with a win.”