FRANCE HAVE REPORTED both Andrew Porter and Tadhg Beirne to the citing commissioner for the incident which led to Antoine Dupont’s injury in today’s Six Nations clash in Dublin.

Dupont was forced off just 28 minutes into the game after being caught at a breakdown, with Tadhg Beirne falling onto the France captain following contact between the Ireland lock and Andrew Porter.

While the incident appeared accidental, France head coach Fabien Galthié was furious with the collision, adding that he feared Dupont had suffered a serious injury.

France have also reported Calvin Nash for the collision with Pierre-Louis Barassi which saw the French centre removed for a HIA, while Nash received a yellow card.

“There is a suspicion of a quite serious knee injury to Antoine,” Galthié said.

“He is suffering, let’s say it how it is. I don’t want to go into details, mainly due to medical confidentiality.

“We have cited two players – Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Porter – in our post-match report. We have also highlighted Calvin Nash to the citing commissioner for [the incident with] Pierre-Louis Barassi, who did not respond well to the HIA protocol. We had players who never came back on.

“We are angry and we want an explanation; so, we have cited two players. We must protect our players. There are rules, regulations… there’s a sort of anger.

“I do not want to pass judgment on the quality of refereeing today. The citing commissioner will decide whether these actions were reprehensible or not.”

On French TV, Galthié went as far as labelling the incident which led to Dupont’s injury as ‘reprehensible’.

“We feel bad for [Antoine]. In terms of the action, in my opinion it was reprehensible, and there are ways to study and analyse it. We feel for him today. He is suffering and we are suffering with him.”

Before Galthié spoke to the media post-game, Ireland interim head coach Simon Easterby was also asked about the incident, as well as the overall performance of referee Angus Gardner – with the home support unhappy with the decision to award Paul Boudehent’s second-half try, despite on off-the-ball tackle on Peter O’Mahony by Thibaud Flament.

“We’ll always go through a process of reflecting on the referee’s performance,” Easterby said.

“So that will be something done internally first and then we’ll feed back so I wouldn’t want to comment on that.

“It’s just a rugby incident where Tadhg Beirne cleans out someone in front of Antoine Dupont and he gets hit on the back of that it’s happened. Players have an awareness now of cleaning out on the lower limbs of players which can create the type of injury that might have happened today. But that wasn’t the case.

“He was securing his own ball, not making contact, the guy Tadhg hit made contact on Dupont and it’s just one of those unfortunate things. I’d probably have to look back on it again. But we feel like the right decision was made there.”