Andrew Porter says he has a clear conscience over the incident which saw Antoine Dupont suffer a serious knee injury in Saturday's Guinness Six Nations meeting with France.
The French scrum-half suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in the first half of his side’s win, before head coach Fabien Galthie singled out Porter and Tadhg Beirne for their roles at the ruck in question.
Dupont appeared to suffer the injury when Beirne attempted to clear the France captain at a ruck, with Porter following up behind his Irish team-mate.
Speaking after the match, Galthie called the incident "reprehensible", and said he would be referring the incident to the game’s citing commissioner, as well as Ireland wing Calvin Nash, who had been yellow-carded for a head contact on Pierre-Louis Barassi later in the game.
No action was taken against Porter or Beirne in the game by referee Angus Gardner, and that was backed up by the citing commissioner, who deemed neither player had a case to answer.
"Not really, he can say what he wants, see how far it gets him," Porter replied, when asked if he was disappointed by Galthie’s comments.
"I knew what I did, I didn’t go out to try and injure anyone. That’s not the type of player I am.
"If he wants to think that, that’s up to him. I even sent Antoine a message on Instagram just to see how he was, obviously you never want to see anyone going off the pitch like that, so if you have the head coach calling for your head, it’s a bit much now, to be fair.
"He’s entitled to his opinion but I know I haven’t done anything wrong there. I sleep well at night."
And while Porter offered his sympathy to Dupont, he maintained injuries like that are an occupational hazard, citing a similar injury suffered by his former Leinster and Ireland team-mate Dan Leavy back in 2019.
"It was a rugby incident, like, I can barely remember exactly what it is.
"I think it was in a ruck, and his leg got trapped in between a ruck when he was trying to counter it, and he obviously just got trapped and went over….but that’s rugby, that happens.
"I don’t think anyone was calling for anyone to cite when Dan Leavy did his knee a few years ago which resulted in him having to finish his career early.
"It happens so much in this sport, that’s the nature of it, injuries happen, and that was a rugby injury, there was no malicious intent surrounding it at all. It’s obviously unfortunate and unlucky. But it’s just what happens," he added.
With no citing coming from the game, the 29-year-old is free to play in Saturday’s Six Nations finale against Italy, where Ireland will need a big win to stand any chance of securing a third title in a row.
While the chances appear slim, Ireland would have to beat Italy with a bonus-point in the day’s first game, before relying on England to either lose to Wales, or win with less than four tries.
That alone would only be enough for second place. They would then need Scotland to cause a shock and defeat France in Paris.
On paper, the chances of that appear slim and, as such, Ireland will likely be left to rue their third quarter collapse against France on Saturday.
And Porter says they remain determined to finish the campaign off with a positive result.
"I wouldn’t say it dents pride at all, really. Obviously we’re disappointed in ourselves with the scoreline, but it was just a few small mistakes on the day really.
"We’re not going to let something like that shake us. We know exactly who we are as players and as a team. We know exactly what we can do, it just didn’t click for us on Saturday.
"We’ve done our reviews and looked through what we can fix up for this weekend, but it wouldn’t knock our pride.
"If anything, it’s emboldened us to go out and produce the rugby we can play.
"We’re not done. We’re not out of the competition completely yet.
"We can’t dwell too much on what’s happening on Saturday because Italy have their own threats and they’re a great outfit as well. They’re a great team at home, barring that French game.
"But every time we’ve played them over there it’s always been a very tough battle," he added.
Watch Italy v Ireland (from 1.15pm) and France v Scotland (from 7.30pm) in the Guinness Six Nations on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player this Saturday.
Follow a live blog of both games on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app, and listen to live commentary of Italy v Ireland on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
