The clock stopped. The quarter-final heat was on. France was clawing back ground against Ireland, but something far uglier than standard rugby violence unfolded at the bottom of a ruck. French flanker Axelle Berthoumieu, age 25, got low and got dirty. She bit Aoife Wafer. Wafer showed the marks to the Assistant Referee immediately. No whistle blew. The game moved on.

That failure to act in the moment, when the Television Match Official (TMO) couldn’t establish “clear and obvious foul play,” was perhaps the biggest breakdown of the day. Biting incidents are notoriously difficult to deal with in-game and almost always require post-match investigation, including assessing dental evidence and interviewing the player. But when the cameras caught it, and the citing commissioner stepped in, the verdict was swift.

The Ban: A Question of Mitigation

Berthoumieu faced a charge under Law 9.12 (Physical Abuse, specifically Biting). World Rugby’s sanction appendix lays out the ground rules: a low-end bite starts at 12 weeks, but a mid-range incident demands an 18-week suspension. The committee found her action to be mid-range, setting the starting point at 18 weeks.

Then came the mitigation. Berthoumieu admitted the foul play and accepted that her actions warranted a red card. She apologized sincerely to Wafer, her team, and her federation, stating that the gesture was “unacceptable” and had “no place on a rugby field”. She had a clean disciplinary record and showed remorse.

The final calculation was cold and precise. The Foul Play Review Committee (FPRC) originally hesitated on full mitigation, citing video footage showing Berthoumieu nudging Wafer’s arm twice before biting, suggesting intent and missed opportunities to desist. That led to an initial sanction of 12 matches. However, on appeal, the Independent Disciplinary Committee ruled that factors relating to intent should influence the entry point (mid-range), not the level of mitigation. The committee concluded she was entitled to the full 50% reduction.

The math was inescapable: 18 weeks, cut in half, resulted in a nine-match suspension. It ended her World Cup campaign immediately.

Was the Ban Warranted?

Nine weeks on the sidelines is a significant sanction, effectively shelving the player until March of the following year, given the fixture schedule. Berthoumieu accepted the punishment and took responsibility. But the disciplinary process itself has been branded by some fans as broken beyond repair. Providing a 50% mitigation for biting is seen as a joke by critics, who question why there is no need to deter future biting.

The very idea that biting—an act of physical abuse—is assessed as “mid-range” prompted sarcastic responses, suggesting a “top end” bite must involve “eating a limb”. Others argued that biting should be “top end, maybe even beyond” and exempt from any mitigations.

The public reaction drew immediate parallels to football’s infamous biter, Luis Suarez, with some spectators asserting Berthoumieu’s action was “worse than Suarez’s bite”. For a sport built on rugged respect, the act of biting feels like a primal, unsporting contamination.

Biting vs. The Career Killer

The severity of the biting ban becomes clearer when contrasted with dangerous tackles that threaten a player’s long-term health, even their career.

Dangerous tackling, including tackling an opponent above the line of the shoulders (Law 9.13), carries a mid-range entry point of only 6 weeks/matches. The maximum sanction for a standard dangerous tackle is 52 weeks.

Look at the cold comparison: Biting starts at an 18-week mid-range entry point. A dangerous high tackle starts at a 6-week mid-range entry point. Biting, classified as “physical abuse”, is considered three times more severe at the entry level than a dangerous tackle that could result in head contact. Even another French player, co-captain Manae Feleu, received a three-match ban (reduced to two) for a dangerous tackle in the same match, a sanction far less punitive than the nine-week sentence for biting.

While dangerous tackles, particularly those involving head contact, are what typically end a player’s career through chronic injury or concussion, World Rugby’s sanctioning framework places an extremely high value on prohibiting intentional, malicious physical abuse. A doctor noted that if a human bite breaks the skin, the victim requires antibiotics due to the bacteria in the human mouth, adding a layer of potential biological danger to the physical shock.

The high baseline penalty for biting—a maximum of 208 weeks compared to 52 weeks for a standard dangerous tackle—suggests that while dangerous tackles are threats of recklessness and physical consequence, biting is viewed as a premeditated violation of good sportsmanship and physical integrity that deserves maximum deterrence. The nine-week ban was warranted by the book, but the fact that 50% mitigation could be applied to such a filthy act leaves a sour taste, suggesting that World Rugby is still struggling to reconcile the letter of the law with the spirit of the game.