Stade Français vow to fight for Attoub
January 20 2010
Demoralised Stade Français prop David Attoub's and his boss Max Guazzini have vowed to fight the player's 70-week ban for eye gouging.
Attoub still maintains that he did not intentionally gouge the eyes of Ulster flank Stephen Ferris, while Guazzini has called the record ban a decision of 'an over zealous judge and with an anti-French bias.'
The length of the ban means that Attoub will essentially not be allowed to play top-flight rugby before his 31st birthday which could well signal the end of his career.
While Judge Jeff Blackett called the incriminating incident he 'worst act of contact with the eyes that I have had to deal with', the French prop insists that photo evidence used against him was taken out of context.
"I was fighting with a player, number seventeen (Bryan Young).Two or three other players got onto me and I tried to get out of a precarious situation," Attoub told Lesite.
"The judge decided that I was guilty on the evidence of photos. I was on his face for only 25 thousandths of a second. There was a photo expert to show that it was not intentional.
"I'm guilty of fighting with number seventeen. There's no problem with that. I received a yellow card and I apologised."
"I did nothing intentionally," he said in another interview with Rugbyrama.
"I was fighting with number seventeen and didn't know were my hand was. I was blocked under a pile of players.
"Seventy weeks is hard to understand. Don't forget that it was the same judge that banned Marius Tincu and Julien Dupuy..."
"We're going to appeal to the ERC. Then we will turn to the LNR and the CNOSF (Comité National Olympique et Sportif Français)
"My wife is pregnant so I'm going to try concentrate on that [over the next few days]. I'm convinced Max (Guazzini) will help me."
Stade Français owner and media mogul Guazzini was furious with the decision and labeled it part of an 'anti-French' movement in European rugby.
"They based their punishment on the British system," Guazzini told AFP.
"(Schalk) Burger got eight weeks for the same offence, Attoub receives 70 weeks. Where's the sense in that?"
Guazzini said he intended to try to have both Attoub's and scrum-half Julien Dupuy's 24-week ban reduced, at least in domestic terms, through the French Rugby Federation (FFR) and the National Rugby League (LNR).