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Rugby Union

RFU official cops season ban

17/12/2007

A spectator who joined a scuffle between the players at a recent Wasps match has been banned from attending top-level English rugby for a season.

Alan Black, who works as a rugby leisure manager with the Rugby Football Union, has professed to be "ashamed" at Saturday's incident that saw him attempt to hit a Clermont Auvergne player with a rolled-up match programme.

His intervention in the on-pitch brawl saw him lean over a barrier separating the crowd from the playing surface and mistakenly strike a Wasps player rather than his intended target of opposition prop Martin Scelzo.

Heineken Cup organisers, the European Rugby Cup, have launched a separate investigation into Black's part in the fracas having already cited Clermont's Jamie Cudmore for allegedly punching Wasps' Tim Payne.

Black's ban will bar him from attending all England and Guinness Premiership matches until June 1st 2008.

The ex-Wasps captain has also been summoned to a personal meeting with RFU chief Francis Baron who is believed to have handed out further sanctions in line with the union's staff code of conduct.

The Twickenham hierarchy claimed that they had taken Black's standing as a prominent and well-respected figure in the game into consideration, describing him in a statement as "a man of not just good character, but of exceptional rugby credentials".