Neil Best, the Ireland flanker who moved from Ulster to Northampton in the summer, will be out of rugby for 18 weeks. An RFU disciplinary panel banned him until the new year for gouging during last month’s Guinness Premiership match against London Wasps. The incident left James Haskell with a scratched cornea, which is yet to clear up.

Unless Best can make a successful appeal (notice of which must be given by today), he will miss eight Premiership matches and the pool games for the European Challenge Cup and the EDF Energy Cup. It will also destroy any hopes he may have of adding to his 18 caps in the autumn internationals or the start of the 2009 RBS Six Nations Championship, because he cannot play until January 28.

Yet he has been fortunate to come away from Tuesday’s hearing without a longer sentence. The panel referred to the case in April 2007 involving Dylan Hartley, the Northampton hooker, who received a six-month ban for gouging, and the abhorrence in which this act of foul play is held.

Best, 29, acknowledged that he had been reckless in the incident with Haskell but denied trying to make contact with his opponent’s eyes. However, the panel, reviewing the evidence, found that Best “deliberately maintained contact with the eye area to force Haskell to release the ball and move backwards and he pulled Haskell’s head upwards by the eye socket”. Haskell, the England flanker, said that the Northampton player had “gratuitously commenced to gouge at his eye with increasing intensity”, causing blurred vision and excruciating pain.

But Best’s previous good record and the character references given by Jim Mallinder, the Northampton director of rugby, and Alan Solomons, the former Ulster director of rugby, produced a lesser sentence than the 36-week ban that the panel decided would have been appropriate for such an offence.

Charlie Fellows, a product of the Worcester Warriors academy, will make his first Premiership start on the wing against Harlequins at Sixways this evening. He takes over from the injured Chris Pennell, while Harlequins bring Chris Robshaw into their back row after a rib injury to Nick Easter during the one-point defeat by London Irish on Saturday.

A record number of nine countries have expressed their intention of bidding for either the 2015 or 2019 World Cups, or both. Australia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Scotland, South Africa and Wales will tender for both, England for 2015 and Russia for 2019, although Jamaica have not followed up an expression of interest. Some of those will be joint bids — Scotland believe that there should be one bid from the four home unions — but presentations will be made to the IRB council in May and a decision on both tournaments will be announced on July 28.