TADHG BEIRNE revealed his and Andrew Porter’s families received backlash following Antoine Dupont’s injury against Ireland.
The France talisman suffered a ruptured ACL in the first-half of the Six Nations clash against Simon Easterby‘s men.
The incident saw his right knee buckle in a ruck under the weight of Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Porter
Head coach Fabien Galthie reported both for their role in the injury.
He said: “We would like to understand why. On this issue, we are angry. We want to protect our players, there are means, rules.
“The citing commissioner must study the actions (and decide if they) are reprehensible or not.”
But the citing commission agreed with referee Angus Gardner that it was a ‘rugby incident’, and Porter insisted Galthie’s comments never troubled him.
That did not stop the backlash, with the Munster captain revealing that even their families were not spared from it.
He said: “I’m sorry for the fact that did happen to him, you don’t like see it happen to any player.
“But the backlash myself and Porter and our families got afterward was probably enough punishment for us on its own, to be honest with you.”
Porter clapped back at Galthie’s response afterwards, insisting that he had done nothing wrong while revealing he had privately messaged Dupont.
Beirne confided that he had done the same, and declared he had no intention of hurting who he hailed as the best in the world.
He added: “I reached out to him. I messaged him on Instagram.
“I tried looking for him after the game as well, but I couldn’t get to him, he was obviously with medical teams.
“You know, he has a million followers or something on Instagram, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to see a message from me, but look, it’s all I could do at the time.
“I sent my regards through Gregory Alldritt as well.
“It’s an incident, obviously, where you can slow it down and it can look bad, but it’s an incident that wasn’t intentional.
“I never intended to injure him.
“The last thing I want to do is injure the best player in the world.
“You don’t go out there to hurt anyone but it was just unfortunate the way it happened.”