Eben's account rubbishes the ridiculous eye gouge claims against Mann

Eben's account as per Wales Online. The claims of Mann eye gouging Eben turns out to be just as stupid as it looked given the footage, as Eben himself says nothing happened in that collapsed maul except some pushing and shoving. I told yas there's nothing there, hey Beeno. It was the later palm to the face and the yank that set it all off.

"Welsh number seven and I were both on the ground," Etzebeth told the disciplinary panel.

"We started pushing and shoving each other on the ground. The shoving and pushing continued until we got onto our feet but nothing serious came of that. Just pushing and shoving each other.

"A few other players (from both sides) joined in, and the situation was basically de-escalating and almost over.

"There were one or two Welsh players in between me and the Welsh number seven.

"I got an open palm to the face in my upper neck/chin area by Welsh number seven. I looked at the assistant referee to check whether he saw what the Welsh number seven did.

"I received no reaction from the assistant referee and Welsh number seven went on to pull my jersey towards him, again.

"At this time I felt I had to start defending myself otherwise I’m going to be rag dolled by him.

"It was at that time that I wanted to push him against the shoulder to try and get hold of him, so he doesn’t continue to have control of me and my jersey.

"There were lots of other players involved. South African number 20 was behind the Welsh number seven and some of the Welsh players were between us.

"I made contact first with his shoulder. My hand went into his face. It was very quick and the slow-motion showed that I made contact with his eye.

"I did not, at any stage, aim for his eyes or intend to make contact with his eye.”

Makes perfect sense Pakie, although the optics looked bad, especially in slo-mo

Were Eben to say that he was eye gouged on the floor, he'd be admitting to "revenge" and thus that his actions were deliberate...increasing his own culpability and the length of his ban.

Right?

Assume that he was eye gouged and you were his council...

What would you advise him to say?

Mann had Marco on him too.

I wonder if there's a universe in which Mann even wins that fight...haha

Plummie as I said looking the footage: there is no reaction from Eben when the supposed gouge is supposed to happen. Mann's hand is resting on his face, then a Welsh player falls over onto Mann's arm pushing the hand down. That is where people imagine they see a pinky going into Eben's eye, yet the hand went there involuntarily - it was forced down by a player falling on it and there's no finger visible on the footage and more importantly, no reaction from Eben, which there would be if there was a finger burrowing into his eye. As Eben says, which you can also see on the footage, all the push and shove afterwards was de-escalating, Eben was smiling at that point, until Mann shoved a palm into his neck/face area and then plucked him forward by the jersey.

So yeah, we can speculate till kingdom come, but what I see on the footage indicates nothing in the collapsed maul that led to the later incident, but two actions from Mann during the handbags after that set it off.

I've only seen the clip once.

I'm not really invested in the argument in terms of whether Eben was eye gouged or not. Just interesting to think of it from the perspective of tying to mitigate as much of the ban as possible.

It's interesting how the court of public opinion and actual courts differ in terms of modalities for "winning".

Eben will be tackling all the laaitjies on the beach ver baai Maar-gate vis Xmas.

Ja it's an interesting angle which I didn't even think about it. Probably because I saw nothing on the footage and also because the Bok camp didn't bring any complaint against Mann. Eben's actions also didn't indicate "revenge" as he was basically starting to chill before Mann escalated things again with the palm and yank. But then I guess a legal team has to anticipate how the review panel may view that etc. etc.

Mampara Pakster the video indicated Mann had his fingers on Eben's face and near his eyes. That means he should have been punished.

Eben does mention things that amount to provocation. Also a big point I raised.

Beeno spot on again.

I also called 12 weeks and 12 weeks it was Man how do I do it!!!! Take a bow Beeno!!

Neither of these players engaged in a deliberate eye gouge. The Committee was almost forced to say Eben’s action was deliberate given the animus out there. They mitigated that by reducing his sentence. Erasmus with his unnecessary comment and the South African rugby press with it’s rapid adoption of the eye gouge narrative didn’t help.

As for the so called Bok fans on here that totally condemned Eben because of it….they look as stupid as they are.