SPIRO: SANZAR needs to toughen up on rugby thugs

Rugby is supposed to be a thugs’ game played by gentlemen. SANZAR’s weak attitude to unacceptable thuggery on the field this season is leading to the possibility of rugby becoming a thugs’ game played by thugs.

We are in the age of the soccer mum, and body contact sports like rugby, league, AFL and, if their supporters and sympathetic journalists are honest, football and basketball, are in danger of becoming politically incorrect activities if they are deemed by their critics to be too dangerous to life and limb.

There are physical risks in playing rugby. There is no doubt about this. But these risks should not be made worse by an official tolerance of a kind of illegal and dangerous play on the field.

There is also the legal position, too. In rugby, as in all the sports, players make an unwritten contract to play within the laws of the game when they are tackling, coming into hard contact as runners, rucking, mauling and scrumming.

The corollary of this is that if they perform an action that is outside the laws of the game that causes damage, they are liable to be sued.

My argument in all of this is that the ideal way to play rugby is to play hard and fast within the laws of the game. A key aspect of the laws is that any attack on the head is completely out-of-bounds. There is zero tolerance for any attacks to the head of a player within the laws.

This approach by the laws has to be backed by a judicial system that is tough on players who go beyond the laws of the game, especially with attacks to the head.

Third, the judicial system should protect players who are constantly be being ‘taken out’ illegally by their opponents.

Now as they say, let’s go to the tapes and look at some of the decisions taken by SANZAR this season. A lot of the material and argument for this piece is based on an article on Stuff which was written by Toby Robson, in my view one of the best rugby writers in New Zealand.

During the Crusaders-Rebels match, Rebels halfback Nic Stirzaker was given a yellow card for stomping on the groin of Richie McCaw. Stirzaker admitted his guilt to the judicial officer and was suspended for one week!

This incident was in the third minute of the match. In my opinion, the timing of the incident so early in the match suggested that Stirzaker had the intent to get his retaliation in against McCaw as early as he could.

It also seemed to me to be a severe stomping that was not justified in any way by McCaw’s play around the ball.

McCaw has been assaulted on the rugby field, as Chris Laidlaw pointed out on Wednesday on The Roar, many times during his great career. There is no doubt that teams now go out deliberately, as part of their tactics, to injure him in some way to get him out of the game.

Was this the Rebels’ plan?

Later on in the same match, in the 50th minute, Scott Higginbotham stamped on McCaw. The judiciary described the incident this way: “I accepted the evidence of Mr Higginbotham that he was attempted to jump over his opponent who was rolling towards him when he miscalculated his jump and made accidental contact with the opponent’s head.”

The judiciary accepted evidence from McCaw who stated that Higginbotham immediately apologised to him after the incident. McCaw accepted the apology saying that he regarded it as ‘genuine.’

Well, perhaps. But Higginbotham was been involved in incidents attacking McCaw in the past.

What worries me about SANZAR’s rationalisation of this incident is that a stomp to the head was involved. Any attack on the head, whether clumsy or malicious, in my opinion, should be treated far more seriously than the Higginbotham matter was.

SANZAR, rightly, has ruled that punches to the face are automatic red cards. This is the correct approach. It is irrelevant if the punch was provoked. The matter of dealing with a blatant provocation is a separate issue and should handled as such.

So Craig Joubert did exactly the right thing when he handed out a red card to Hayden Triggs for his punches to the face of Duane Vermeulen. The player expressed surprise. But surely as a veteran player he knows that punching, particularly to the face, is totally unacceptable in the modern rugby game.

There was no provocation, either. I noticed that earlier in the match Vermeulen blocked off Triggs from making a tackle. But this is acceptable play, Vermeulen was standing his ground in effect. Triggs gave him a push, also acceptable.

But the punches came following a lineout. We don’t know what happened in the lineout. Play had moved well away across the field from the lineout. Triggs was about 20m away from the action when he belted Vermeulen. Twice. In the face.

SANZAR’s judicial officer Robert Stetzner made the argument that the incident was in the mid-range of up to seven weeks penalty. But he took two weeks off for admission of guilt (how could the punches be denied!) and remorse (after the event!).

He also made the case that the Blues had to play with 14 for a long period of the match, which they lost. They also lost a penalty shot at goal which would have given them the lead, if it had been successful.

As a consequence of all this, Triggs will miss the next two rounds of matches for the Blues.

I find this reasoning by the judiciary very hard to understand. What would the punishment have been if the Blues had won the match? Presumably a harsher penalty.

This is nonsense. The outcome of a match is immaterial to what the punishment should be. What Triggs did should have been the issue. And on the evidence presented to the judiciary what he did was unacceptable. Not one punch, but two.

He should have been out for at least two months, in my opinion.

The Highlanders prop Kane Hames was suspended for five weeks for one punch to the face of Dominic Bird. Bird was lying at the bottom of the ruck when Hames hit him. His eye was badly damaged. Bird could mount an assault case against Hames on this evidence.

Hames, like Triggs, is very lucky that the judiciary has been lenient in his case.

Then there is the matter of the Crusaders prop Owen Franks receiving two weeks for twice hitting Josh Hohneck, a Highlanders prop. A third week was removed because of previous good behaviour. In effect, because the Crusaders have a bye and will play a training match this weekend, Franks will miss only one Super Rugby match.

Again, the rationale for this slap-on-the-wrist punishment is faulty as far as I am concerned. The argument was made that because Hohneck was bigger than Franks (they are both 118kgs!) he needed to be over-physical to move him off the ball.

Franks was deemed to have been ‘reckless’ but the punches were ‘not intentional.’

If it was not intentional, why were two punches thrown?

If SANZAR wants to get punching out of rugby, as it should, then it needs to toughen up its attitude to players. Punching is for the boxing ring. It has no place in rugby. SANZAR needs to impose sanctions that make this very clear to players. The punishment should fit the crime, it’s as simple as that.