Ronan O'Gara handed five week suspension for 'actions against a match official'

The La Rochelle head coach was sanctioned for his 'threatening acts or words towards a match official' during their Top 14 defeat to Toulon at the end of January.

La Rochelle's Ronan O'Gara has been banned for five weeks. Pic: XAVIER LEOTY/AFP via Getty Images.

Ronan O'Gara has been relegated to the stands for his side’s Top 14 trip to bottom-of-the-table Vannes and the rest of the regular season after he was slapped with a five-week touchline ban by the Fédération française de rugby’s appeals committee.

The belated sanction – for ‘actions against a match official’, and for ‘threatening act(s) or word(s) towards a match official’, in his side’s 45-26 loss against Toulon in January, according to the committee’s outline judgement published on Friday, was handed down more than a month after the Top 14’s usual disciplinary arbiters the Ligue Nationale de Rugby formally reprimanded and fined him €3,000 for the incident, at Stade Felix Mayol on January 26.