I think the obvious contrition helped. I suspect that if they had tried to fight it, it would have been longer.
i'm not suggesting that she was faking her apology, but they all publicly apologise after things like this, I'm not sure this would (or should) make a difference - rather, the lack of any sort of contrition I think would probably have stood against her.
Perhaps, but it looked more like a deliberate step than a hard stamp to me. Still unacceptable of course, but perhaps the reasoning was that they had to keep the three-match ban option for cases when there was a hard stamp or similar?
I'd agree it was more in the region of a 'studs-first nudge' than a proper stamp. From memory the laws of the game are fairly loosely phrased, so there's a degree of latitude to the interpretation, I guess.
O.
