Cooney sanction 'harsh' says Sexton as Ireland prepare for Australia clash

Mark Sexton believes that Hugh Cooney has paid a high price for a split-second incident that has ruled the Ireland centre out of the rest of the World Rugby U20 Championships.

Cooney was sent off for a dangerous tackle on England's Jacob Cusick five minutes from the end of the sides’ 34-34 draw on Saturday. After clashing heads with the England replacement, Cooney failed a head injury assessment, which means a mandatory 12-day rest period.

The Leinster academy player’s challenge was deemed to fall into the six-game sanction category, which was reduced to three by mitigation. In addition, the completion of the World Rugby coaching intervention programme would further reduce the ban to two games.

However, speaking ahead of this morning’s Pool B game against Australia (10am), attack and backs coach Sexton confirmed that the suspension will only kick in after his rest period is up, thus ruling the Clontarf player out of the rest of tournament.

"It’s a tough one," said Sexton. "I think the English player dropped .4 of a metre in a split second or something outrageous, that is difficult to manage.

"Ultimately, from our point of view, player safety and player welfare comes first.

"Throughout our academies and throughout Irish rugby, we talk about safety and every day we do tackle technique in terms of safety, staying low, making sure that our tackle height is low, that we’re dropping before contact.

"There were so many circumstances within that tackle. But if you look through the 20s this year, you look through the senior team, we were yet to concede a red card in contact, I think that might have been our first from an Irish team this season.

"I think we were unfortunate that that happened but we are keeping in mind that we have to get