Headbutting schoolboy suspended

The schoolboy rugby player who knocked a referee unconscious with a head-butt has been banned from playing for 10 years of which seven years are suspended, leaving him with an effective suspension of three years.

This was a decision of the Blue Bulls Rugby Union's disciplinary committee at its meeting on Monday evening, 23 April 2012.

The player concerned is a 17-year-old matric pupil at Hoërskool Hans Strijdom in Mookgophong (Naboomspruit) in Limpopo Province. The match was between Hans Strijdom and Alberton.

The referee in question was Chris de Beer, an experienced first league referee of the Blue Bulls Referees' Society.

The match was apart of the annual Mauritz Hansen Rugby Week 2012, started in Naboomspruit in 1993 as the Hansie Week. The host school was Hoërskool Hans Strijdom.

During the match the referee had occasion to send off a Hans Strijdom prop for a head-butt against an opponent. At the end of the match he walked to the Hans Strijdom players to check the number of the player sent off. (It was 17.) As he did so the lock with the number 4 stepped forward and head-butted the referee, knocking him out.

The referee recovered and actually refereed the final match of the tournament five hours later.

The referee laid a charge of assault at the police and, it seems, the player acknowledged guilt and paid a fine of R1,500. The rugby inquiry into the incident was taken over by the Blue Bull Rugby Union after the Blue Bulls Rugby Referees' Society completed its inquiry and handed its findings to the Union for further investigation and action.

The player apparently pleased guilty and the president of the Blue Bulls Rugby Union, Louis Nel, said that the fact that this was the player's first such wrongdoing and that his mother was terminally ill were taken into account as mitigating circumstances.

Afterwards De Beer said that he was disappointed with the disciplinary committee's findings and was resigning from the Referees' Society.

He said: "The punishment is ridiculous and will bring it about that referees will more frequently be exposed to this kind of violence."