Munster flanker Alan Quinlan has received a six-week ban after being found guilty by an ERC disciplinary hearing of a stamping offence in Saturday's Heineken European Cup victory over Cardiff at Thomond Park.

Quinlan will miss Munster's final two European games in Pool Four, against Bourgoin in Geneva and the Leicester Tigers at Thomond Park; both these matches take place in January. His ban ends on January 30th. He will also miss upcoming Magners Celtic League matches that include the games against Leinster on December 27th and Connacht on New Year's Eve.

The action was taken by the citing commissioner for the Limerick game, England's Alan Mansell. He lodged the citing for alleged stamping in contravention of Law 10.4 (b).

The inquiry was held at ERC headquarters in Dublin, the independent disciplinary committee chaired by Christopher Quinlan (England) and including Bruce Reece-Russel (England) and Iain Goodall (Scotland).

The ERC statement read: "Following an admission of guilt by the player, the committee upheld the citing for stamping and determined the appropriate period of suspension as being a period of six (6) weeks to run from today (Wednesday, 20 December) up to and including 30 January, 2007."

The disciplinary body's decision came as a huge surprise to Munster and the player and a spokesperson for Munster confirmed Quinlan is likely to appeal the decision. Any player looking to follow that course of action has 72 hours to appeal from the minute they receive written notification of the original decision.

The scope for censure available to the disciplinary committee for stamping or trampling ranges from one month to 12 and this decision is considered to be mid range.

The incident is believed to have taken place in the 70th minute of the game at Thomond Park and the Cardiff player involved was replacement secondrow Mark Lewis.

Former Leinster second row Ben Gissing received a two-week ban for punching while playing for Calvisano in the European Cup against the Ospreys in Italy. He is suspended for 14 days up to and including January 2nd, 2007.