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Referees handing out red and yellow cards aren’t ruining the game of the rugby; narrow-minded players making stupid decisions to earn the red and yellow cards are.
From an otherwise unremarkable game between the Waratahs and Sharks on Saturday, we have the curious case of a couple of cards issued by referee Nic Berry just after halftime.
The Waratahs won a lineout on their side of halfway, made a bit of ground from the resulting maul, before Jake Gordon took possession and kicked the ball upfield.
At the back of the maul, and with the ball now well away, Sharks prop Thomas du Toit still had hold of Jed Holloway’s jersey, who on realising the South African international was still attached, lashed out not toward the offending hand, but rather a long way further up the body, sending a flying forearm or elbow or both in the direction of du Toit’s right cheek-and-nose area.
Either stunned by the impact or straight-out playacting, du Toit slumped to the ground well after Holloway had made the successful, if moderately crude detachment.
The moment was picked up by the assistant referee and the TMO, who alerted Berry to the moment, and the appropriate process followed.
Holloway was shown a red card, despite Waratahs captain Michael Hooper’s rather misguided protest, with the ref quite clear in his explanation: “I know he’s held you back, OK, but you’ve taken it into your own hands. You’ve thrown an elbow and it’s connected with the head of a player. It’s a red card.”
The Foul Play Law is equally clear, stating: “A player must not physically or verbally abuse anyone. Physical abuse includes, but is not limited to… striking with any part of the arm.”
In their notice of a Foul Play Review hearing, SANZAAR paraphrased this specifically for the incident as “striking with the elbow”.
Holloway didn’t head to South Africa on Sunday with the Waratahs, and even with the inevitable and over-generous good Samaritan and early plea discounts, he was still suspended for three weeks on Monday night.
Waratahs player Jed Holloway (4) goes up for the ball (Photo by Speed Media/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
With the lock making his way from the ground, and while the boos rang out from local fans, with an evidently loose appreciation on the Laws of the Game, Berry turned his attention to du Toit:
“I’m going to deal with your actions as well, OK? You’ve held a player off the ball, so it’s going to be a yellow card against you.”
Generally speaking, there have been a couple of camps to the reaction to this bold decision.
The first camp is the “What? A yellow card for a jersey tug?” camp, whose added justification is “there’s be ten blokes a game carded, if that’s going to be the case.”
This camp sees the jersey tugging in compete isolation and can’t work out how it’s even a penalty. There are a number of laws around impeding players off the ball, or interfering with players not in possession that apply here, but that’s clearly neither here nor there for this camp.
The second camp is the “A jersey tug does not justify an elbow to the head” camp, who also struggle to see why du Toit was carded, as if he was a completely innocent bystander.
There’s also the “He deserved a yellow for the dive” camp, who also seem to believe Holloway might not have been pinged at all if du Toit didn’t fall to the ground. Which is amusing, if you consider just how many cameras are involved these days.
The final camp is the one I’ll firmly admit to being part of, and that’s the one that says du Toit absolutely deserved the yellow card for a cynical piece of play that, had it not happened, would not have resulted in Holloway lashing out as he did.
Holloway only copped his red card because of du Toit’s actions, and Nic Berry was bang on the mark for issuing the yellow as well.
But I’ll happily take this further.
The best way to get rid of what some see as questionable yellow cards for actions like du Toit’s in the long run is to issue more yellow cards for actions like du Toit’s in the short term.
Du Toit didn’t expect to get elbowed in the head, I’m sure, but he thought he could get away with tugging Holloway’s jersey because it’s rarely penalised.
But a jersey tug with the ball 20 metres away is like a team infringing again having already given up penalty advantage. It’s like taking a step forward in the defensive line when the referee is looking the other way, or the not-so-subtle glance over the shoulder and slight sideways step to impede an opposition player’s kick chase.
In isolation, they’re tiny things in the game that have little impact. But in the grander scheme, it’s exactly the kind of cynical play from (mostly) defensive sides that at time reaches plague proportions and is a large reason why referees cop as much criticism as they do for supposedly ruining the game when they do blow a penalty.
Berry should be applauded to sending du Toit to the naughty chair, and more’s the point, he and his colleagues should be encouraged to go harder on cynical infringements, especially early in games.
A yellow card for a ruck infringement on the defensive team’s try line in the fifth minute would immediately put both teams on notice for the rest of the game.
Referees going harder on cynical infringements would force teams into change, and ultimately allow the game to breathe, and become better to play and watch.
But this is not a recent problem, obviously. It’s only got worse as the professional game has become more and more professional, and as players, coaches and teams strive for whatever edge they can.
And this is not a recent opinion either; I’ve long-held the thought the more yellow cards are a better solution than reducing penalty goal values, and first wrote about solving this issue with more yellow cards back in March 2012.
Thomas du Toit got his comeuppance on Saturday night in Sydney, but not from Jed Holloway.
And more players need to be penalised the same way.