Owen Franks has escaped sanction for a potential eye gouge in Saturday night’s second Bledisloe Test.
Footage of Franks appearing to rub his hand across the face of Wallabies lock Kane Douglas, lit up social media on Saturday night, but SANZAAR reportedly deemed the contact not serious enough for a citing.
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen backed the decision not to cite Franks, saying he had ‘nothing to answer for’.
"I've seen the footage and I agree with the independent person who said there's nothing to answer for," he said.
“You've got to be really, really careful until you see all the views, and social media I think alerted everyone to it.
Poite does nothing about illegal play he is looking at! #NZLvAUS pic.twitter.com/gQyMX5sYMz
— Kevin Byrne (@kevinjbyrne) August 27, 2016
“Whoever was running it has obviously seen all the angles and believes there's nothing to answer for.
“(I) think at times people might have been a little over-keen, but it was all push and shove.
“There's nothing really in it really.”
Wallabies coach Michael Cheika said after the match that he expected the citing commissioner to find issue with the incident.
“We saw it at the time but I'm sure the match review will pick it up,” he said.
“They couldn't miss it, it was pretty in the open. It'd be pretty hard for the match review to miss.”
