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If you thought Quinton de Kock and David Warner’s chirps were offside, then you should sit down for a drink with Junior Bok Tiaan van der Merwe.

The SA u20 hooker has copped a six-week ban after an incident that took place during the semi-final Junior World Championship encounter against England.

The Junior Boks would lose that match by the narrowest of margins, going down 31-32, and it looks like van der Merwe also came out second best during his verbal altercation with England lock Joel Kpoku.

Here’s Sport24 with the findings of World Rugby, the sport’s governing body:

[He] used sexually explicit language directed at Kpoku [below] as the Englishman was on his knees preparing to get ready for a scrum.

“It was a serious and gross verbal abuse of a highly-offensive sexual nature in relation to a player’s mother accompanied by a highly offensive sexual gesture,” the World Rugby report read.

According to the report, Van der Merwe admitted that he had said: “That is what your mother will look like while sucking my c***”, accompanied by a highly-offensive facial gesture imitating a sucking motion directed at the England player.

Not exactly a good look.

A little more on the ruling from SA Rugby Mag:

The Lions player was cited under Law 9.12: A player must not verbally abuse anyone. Verbal abuse includes, but is not limited to, abuse based on religion, colour, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation.

He was given a 12-week ban reduced to six weeks for a guilty plea and showing remorse.

Due to the ban, the hooker will now miss the Lions’ remaining Provincial Rugby Challenge games, and also one of their U21 Championship games in August.

I’m sure he’ll learn from this and come back stronger.

Maybe one day we will see Tiaan and Joe square up at international level again, for their senior international teams, which would make for quite a spicy encounter.

[source:sport24&sarugbymag]