The league starts on Saturday. For Racing 92, it will start without their wing, and for five rounds.

The incident dates back to 21 August, in a pre-season match lost 38-31 at Brive. Sent off in the 31st minute for kicking an opponent, Wame Naituvi had his case heard by the disciplinary committee of the Ligue nationale de rugby (LNR), which delivered its decision on Tuesday.

Nine weeks on the table, five handed down

How the sanction was reached is worth spelling out, because it shows how the scale works. The committee settled on the mid-range level of seriousness, which carries an eight-week ban. The player’s disciplinary record, with eight yellow cards and two reds since his professional debut at Mont-de-Marsan in 2017, added one more week, taking the sanction under consideration to nine weeks.

It was the player’s admission of guilt and the remorse he expressed that brought the ban down to five weeks, in a proposal accepted by the club.

Five rounds, and a busy fixture list

The absence comes at a bad time. Naituvi will miss the home and away fixtures against Bordeaux-Bègles, Lyon, La Rochelle, Bayonne and Perpignan, before a possible return at Toulon on 10 or 11 October.

Racing, semi-finalists in last season’s Top 14, are therefore without a regular try scorer for the opening block of the season. Our database credits him with 40 tries in 84 Pro D2 matches for Mont-de-Marsan, then 13 tries in 32 Top 14 games since moving to the Paris region in summer 2023, making 58 tries in 125 appearances across all competitions.

The 30-year-old Fijian, who has never been capped by the Flying Fijians, has extended his contract with Racing until 2028.

A procedure about to change

This case is one of the last to be dealt with under the old system. On Monday the league announced a fast-track procedure that applies from this season in the Top 14 and Pro D2: hearings, until now held on the Wednesday after the match, will be brought forward, and the committee will be able to downgrade a red card if it considers that the passage of play did not warrant it.

The stated aim of Emmanuel Eschalier is the same as for the measures affecting play on the pitch: speed things up, and avoid a player being suspended for ten days while waiting for his hearing.