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Leo Cullen declined to bring up the main topic of conversation stemming from his team’s 35-19 bonus point win over Northampton on the RDS, namely Tom Wood connecting with Josh van der Flier’s face / head in a ruck at minute 70.
French referee Pierre Brousset, along with his TMO Olly Hodges and his Irish assistants, did not consider the incident worthy of a yellow or indeed a red card that many spectators would have expected.
“I didn’t go into it with a lot of detail. I saw it and, to be fair, I know there is some level of contact with the face of the head cut, but I would have to look at it again. We will see that and give our opinion. It goes through the normal channels, ”Cullen said.
“All incidents in the game will be analyzed instead of looking at massive comments on this forum. There’s a forum for it where we give input to our umpire evaluators, so to speak, that’s dealing with it and then obviously there’s a subpoena process that’s separate from that again.
“It is not just that incident. I’m sure there will be other parts that I will look at from my side. Sometimes we are also drawn into that by some of our actions.
“I want to see the whole game again with close scrutiny with a view of what happens at some of the key moments of the game.”
Cullen also confirmed that Caelan Doris, a late abstinence, has been bothered by a calf problem for a few weeks.
“Caelan has that calf [problem] from that Scotland game and I felt it a bit last week as well. He wasn’t feeling very well today, so we made that call. Josh came in and I thought Josh was good.
“Harry [Byrne] did not reach the first kickoff. Take a hit in the back doing that tackling drill right at the end of the warm-up. We are in the dressing room and will it be okay? So we just make the call there, a split second.
“It looked like his back was about to seize. That’s just one of those pretty innocuous things and a big credit to Ross for stepping in there. We had already put Ciarán Frawley in the bank and then Cian Kelleher enters the bank.
“We went back to that 5-3 division from the bench, thankfully, so someone was watching us,” Cullen noted, when a head butt between Jimmy O’Brien and Garry Ringrose forced them both to go under the HIA. O’Brien missed his and will have to go through return-to-game protocols, while Ringrose passed his and came back, although he was subsequently hit in the ribs as well.
“So a lot of interruption and then before you know it Ciarán Frawley and Cian Kelleher are on the field too. It was a very strange start to the game.
“I thought we settled in and started the game well, but after that it was a bit disjointed. Even though we got a win and a bonus point, I think the guys are in the dressing room kind of scratching their heads about what really happened there. “
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