Rugby player gasps for air and grabs own neck after brutal red card incident

A red card offence in a French Top 14 match left a rugby player gasping for air.

Clermont Auvergne hosted Stade Francais at the Parc des Sports Marcel Michelin, and Stade's Tanginoa Halaifonua was given his marching orders after 26 minutes.

The Tongan blindside flanker attempted to catch a kick, but fumbled and dropped it. From there, he scooped up the ball and charged into Argentina star Bautista Delguy, with a leading elbow.

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Delguy fell to the ground, appearing to gasp for air as he gripped his own neck. After a brief referral with the TMO, referee Thomas Charabas, Halaifonua was shown a red card.

You can watch the clip below.

At the time of the incident, the score was 14-13 to Clermont. The home side would go on to win the match 41-18, heavily aided by the extra man advantage.

Stade Francais head coach Laurent Labit later commented: "I found this card very severe, it is a very important fact of the match. We can clearly see that there is an intention to cause a commotion, just before the referee says that we are making cinema during certain phases of the game , so putting a red on this action is severe.

"We finished the match with seven penalties against fourteen for Clermont We hoped to play for a while with fourteen against fourteen given that they were penalized a lot, unfortunately that did not happen. was the case. We knew what awaited us, but we eroded by leaving a lot of energy with one player less."