For as long as there have been cards to punish misdemeanours in sport there have been referee blunders.
On the whole refs and match officials are for the most part fair in their judicial decision-making. However, there are times when their influence is felt unfairly.
Take the time, for instance, when English referee Graham Poll mistakenly issued Croat Josip Simunic three yellow cards before sending him off during a group runners-up match during the 2006 World Cup.
By any means three is a lot of cards – particularly for one person!
To put this into perspective, according to ESPN’s Rugby Stats website the most amount of yellow cards awarded in one game is five against Fiji. That is potentially 50 minutes of 14 men as one the best possible outcomes. However, it could be much worse if some of those players were sent off at the same time.
Five cards! Frivolous, ridiculous, abhorrent, over the top and erroneous in the modern game I hear you cry.
Well, how about six cards… six red cards?
If five yellows made your purest blood boil just thinking about such a travesty then surely six reds will see your entire body explode in a similar manner to what would occur if you were abruptly and unexpectedly dropped into a vacuum.
I can almost feel the self-created atmospheric imbalance pulling my eyeballs out of their sockets right now.
But alas (and ignoring hyperbole), six red cards was exactly what occurred in a semi-professional French club match between Le Boulou and Salanque Côte Radieuse following a all-in team fight that lasted several minutes.
Most impressively, four of the six came within the first three minutes of the match after a fight broke out following a failed scrum that ironically lacked any venom.
The pursuing brawl is arguably one of the biggest seen for a while at the professional level and saw a number of players consequently suspended.
Oh sacrebleu!
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