A red card for slipping over? Zas ridiculous

With about 20 minutes left of an intense match at Newlands, and his side holding a precarious two-point lead, young Stormers winger Leolin Zas chased a midfield up-and-under by his flyhalf Jean-Luc du Plessis.

In a competition full of speedsters, Zas might be in the top four or five gas men. He’s also fortunate to have a vertical leap of about 1.1 metres. A kick is only as good as the chase.

Wallaby flyhalf Bernard Foley called for the ball; in truth, he was the only Waratah in a position to claim it. Zas timed his chase perfectly. Both men were thinking: “jump”.

Zas was craning his neck to see the ball dropping from behind him. Like a good jumper does, he made that one last, hard step to get the best leap. Foley could see the ball without adjusting his approach; he seemed focused only on the ball.

Foley has always reminded me of a World War II-era RAF bomber pilot, particularly in Novembers, with his neat, clipped moustache. A lieutenant, perhaps. Also, he seems like a man who would follow orders – he is daring, and probably a good man to have on a team with so many colourful characters.

Foley jumped into the path of the ball and assumed a decent position to catch it. He was not skywalking; it was just a medium jump.

Meanwhile, Zas never planted that foot. He never sprang up that metre to easily beat Foley to the ball, or perhaps hit shoulder to shoulder (as had happened several times in the match already) with luck the decider. He just skidded. His jump never occurred; his boot slid, he slipped, and it had the effect of taking Lt Foley out.

Zas got the worst of it, actually – his slip resulted in getting a hip and thigh to his head, while Foley was up and back in the resulting play after face-planting on the thick turf.

Newlands is a watershed. This part of Cape Town is wet and all the mountain’s shadows and water flows by and through the stadium as if it were an island fortress. In decades past, even the barefoot curtain-raisers here were mud-mosh pits by halftime. I played a game here when it was so wet that a drop kick was impossible.

If you hike up the Skeleton Gorge, above Newlands, you are struck by the moss on the forever-wet rocks that never see the sun. All manner of flora grows here you’d associate with a rainforest. It’s a micro-climate.

We lived virtually in the shadow of this old ground (the second oldest continuously used rugby stadium in the world) when I was a baby; we moved because the short daylight and rain depressed my mum. In June and July, the average number of days of rain per month are about 18. April and May are when the rains begin (75-90 millimetres a month).

You have to decide what type of stud to screw into your boots just before a game, because sometimes on a sunny day, the rains from three days prior will affect the pitch. The 14 mm or the 18 mm or the maximum stud length. It might slow you down to use the 20 mm but you might keep your feet in the lush field.

All this fresh water was the very reason for the Dutch East India Company’s interest in this port about halfway from Holland to Malaysia and Indonesia, despite the wild storms that left many a ship, then and now, stranded or worse on the rocks.

But back to our story. Zas slipped, and therefore never was able to start nor complete his jump, and Lt Foley bombed into the soft turf.

Referee Mike Fraser is a young referee from New Plymouth, not much older than Schalk Burger. He did an excellent job, for the most part, on Saturday night, and clearly tries to keep a game flowing. He did miss a knock-on before the Waratahs’ winning try, but he was occupied watching the offside line (where both teams had transgressed throughout the match). But referees are human, no matter where they come from, and the Stormers should never have lost a scrum on their five-metre line. Win that scrum, exit well, and take the win.

But the Zas slip resulted in a heavy fall by Foley, and an immediate barrage of chatter from the Waratahs near Fraser. Fraser referred the matter to the TMO Shaun Veldsman, who looked at a few angles.

Their conversation was choppy. Veldsman noted what was obvious to anyone who watched the footage: Zas’ foot never found purchase on the field as he tried to compete for the ball he’d worked to contest. “He slipped.”

Fraser said that was irrelevant, because Zas was not in a position to catch the ball.

Veldsman’s point was the slip was the reason Zas was not in position; what he failed to articulate was that Zas was trying to jump, but failed only because of a slip.

In other words, if Zas had not slipped, you would have seen two players, with eyes only on the ball, competing in the air, one of the most entertaining sights in rugby (or AFL or the NBA or the NFL or soccer). Thus, if cards were being discussed, we should factor in that it might be considered odd to send a player off for slipping.

I don’t think Fraser meant that slips are never relevant to the decision as to penalise or card a player. I think he viewed Zas as only running through Foley and the slip being just part of a bad plan. He did not interpret the plant foot correctly. Zas always plants that way. He almost always competes in the air (which may not be wise, but it is one of his core skills).

I suspect Fraser waved off Veldsman’s observation because he thought Zas had done an ‘Emery’ – that Zas was just trying to catch the ball on the run, rather than on the hop.

When Zas went home to Hermanus and tried to explain to his family why he was sent off in this game called rugby, I wonder if it was confusing to them.

“You got a straight red card for slipping, hey. Elbows in the face and late shoulder charges and MMA headlocks and punching is yellow? Soccer is easier to understand, man. Why don’t you play soccer again?”

Slipping in rugby can draw you a penalty, of course. At scrum time, you can’t keep slipping your bind, or slipping to your knees. If you slip while you are running to tackle a guy, you might unintentionally shoulder charge, high tackle or swing an arm by mistake. If you slip while you are getting set in the defensive line, you might get pinged for offside. If you slip in a breakdown setting, you’ll often be whistled and it really won’t matter about your intent.

But it’s rare to be red carded for slipping. Maybe a slip of the tongue, like Joe Marler had, but a genuine, lose-your-balance pratfall, a slapstick Three Stooges moment does not generally result in being sent off.

If Foley had slipped into his jump and Zas had jumped his typical metre up into the air, I would have objected to Foley being red carded, no matter what happened to Zas. If he broke his collarbone, I’d still only penalise a slip with a penalty, because it’s a slip and how can a slip be carded?

I’m not relying on Foley’s lack of harm.

What I’m arguing is that intent matters to referees. Referees measure intent all the time, across the pitch, in many ways. Is that a genuine attempt to roll away? Was that an attempt to punch or just to wave a handbag? Who blew up that scrum; was the loosehead walking around or did it just happen?

So, the fact that Zas slipped, a complete accident, and wound up face to face with Foley’s knee is relevant when thinking about a card, yellow or red.

A red card is designed to stop dangerous play. What would Zas do differently? Not chase? Not try to leap? Not look at the ball the entire time?

This article is not about the victory, which was well-deserved. Michael Hooper is maybe the fittest flanker in rugby, Kurtley Beale scissored through the Stormer defence even before the red card, and Israel Folau looked dangerous all the time. They were resilient, the lads from New South Wales. They never gave up.

But should a slip, an accident, a completely unintentional act, be red carded, even if Zas could and should do nothing differently when chasing a ball (except not slip)?