Disciplinary hearing for NZ's Carter

Dan Carter faces a disciplinary hearing in Milan today after being cited for an alleged dangerous tackle.

The New Zealand star was reported by match citing commissioner, Australian Scott Nowland, following an incident involving Wales scrum-half Martin Roberts at the Millennium Stadium.

Fly-half Carter escaped censure from referee Craig Joubert as New Zealand recorded a 19-12 Millennium Stadium victory – their 21st in succession against Wales.

But if International Rugby Board-appointed judicial officer Jeff Blackett decides Carter deserves a ban, then it could threaten his participation against England at Twickenham on November 21.

The All Blacks are currently preparing for next Saturday’s appointment with Italy at the San Siro, a game Carter would probably have been rested for anyway.

The All Blacks had two players – wing Sitiveni Sivivatu and prop Tony Woodcock - cited and suspended following the victory over Australia in Tokyo nine days ago, bans that meant they missed the Wales game.

“Looking at the replay it did look quite high,” said Wales substitute Roberts. “He did apologise to me, he said ’sorry for the tackle’ after the game. Things like that happen in games, and you just have to take it on the chin. It looked bad, but I was fine.”

Wales head coach Warren Gatland and assistant coach Shaun Edwards had no doubt Carter should have been yellow-carded.

Gatland said: “It was a head-high tackle. All the officials missed it, so we are pretty disappointed with that.”

And Edwards added: “They should have played the last 10 minutes of the game with 14 men.

“It was a high tackle. You see players get yellow-carded for that, you see players red-carded for that.”

All Blacks centre Conrad Smith, meanwhile, was convinced he had scored one of three New Zealand ’tries’ ruled out by television match official, Englishman Graham Hughes.

“I thought I had scored – I thought I got the ball down,” Smith said. “I am not a big fan of video refs, but that’s another story. I think it is a case of half the time referees can usually make the right call when they do it themselves.

“We felt if we kept hold of the ball, things would open up in the game, which is sort of how it turned out. I thought we were a bit unlucky not to score a couple more (tries).”

And All Blacks coach Graham Henry added: “We had three tries the TMO (television match official) looked at, and one was pretty obvious.

“That would have given us a gap, and maybe we could have used that. That was a bit disappointing, but the guys played very well in the second half and perhaps deserved to win by more.”