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Is Taniela Tupou now just being penalised for being too big and strong for the smaller kids in the playground?
It’s an astonishing question to throw up when Super Rugby Pacific is populated by giant bodies of 110-120kgs who would break in half every scribe on The Roar website with one brutal, front-on tackle.
The thing is the Queensland Reds and Wallabies prop is built more like a monster truck at around 130kg and with the strength to go with it.
This week’s crazy case of the cleanout that was or wasn’t worth a suspension is worth dissecting. Tupou was all clear on Friday during the match, cited by Sunday, facing a three-week ban on Monday and all clear again by Wednesday.
How could there be so many mixed assessments by pros at this sort of thing?
His thundering, low cleanout on Brumbies backrower Jahrome Brown made fans wince from Cairns to Cooma and they were just the ones watching on TV, not those going “ouch” at the ground.
Taniela Tupou (Photo by Getty Images)
Brown is a muscular 105kg-plus, so no small fry himself, yet he was blown away at that breakdown in Canberra on March 18 like he was a pubescent yet to hit the gym.
Tupou is a force of nature. His centre of gravity is so low that few in the world could have cleaned out Brown in the fashion he did with such power.
Saturday, March 26 is A Day in Union, a national day of celebration across all levels of rugby. Learn about its origins in this week’s The Roar Rugby Podcast.
A couple of things. Tupou didn’t take a running leap and turn airborne torpedo to connect with Brown. That would have deserved a suspension for dangerous play.
He thrust from his feet on the turf so by that mere fact there was a degree of control.
Referee Damon Murphy and his TMO crew deemed it a “shoulder-on-shoulder” contact during the game. Play on.
The Brumbies did not initiate a post-game citing. The Citing Commissioner requested all his regular player reports on the Saturday. His view of it was that the incident met the red card threshold when applying the law that “a player must not make contact with an opponent above the line of the shoulders.”
Hitting Brown’s right shoulder from above does not mean the same as “contact above the line of the shoulders.”
Was there a flick of contact to Brown’s head or his neck? The Judicial Committee studied every angle and saw no evidence of direct contact to the head. If there was secondary contact to the neck if was of “insufficient danger” to warrant any action, the Committee found.
The sheer shunting force of the locomotive that Tupou turns into in those moments makes the collision look enormous. It was.
Did every fibre of Brown’s upper body feel like a cement wall had just hit him? Yes. That is not yet in the law book as an offence.
Is rugby now trying to adjudicate on the amount of force you can direct into a cleanout?
With no case now to answer, Tupou’s cleanout might actually be rated as technically perfect with the additional push of both hands to get rid of Brown from the scene. Old-timers would have thought so.
This is 2022 so different standards do apply and we know and respect what they are to protect a player’s head health. Because of his power, Tupou does have to be technically spot-on because an off-course missile will cause damage.
It’s interesting to go back to 2018. Tupou got off again without suspension in front of the Judicial Committee after a thumping front-on hit on Stormers winger Craig Barry in Cape Town.
There were no wrapping arms but it wasn’t high or exactly a shoulder charge either. It looked like Tupou hit him with his giant upper chest and heaved those arms at Barry again to fell him on the spot.
Tupou got off a late or dangerous tackle charge but there was no threshold for a ban reached by being found guilty under Law 9.11 “Players must not do anything that is reckless or dangerous to others.”
That’s really where officials are at.
Tupou hits with such force that nobody wants to be on the receiving end. Citing commissioners and other adjudicators flinch at the sight but you can’t legislate to hit softer just because he’s the biggest in the playground.
There is another element in play. If in a spot of bother, holler for Mark Martin QC. He’s two-from-two in saving Tupou from bans.
Now for Heritage Round. Tupou’s presence as a scrum weapon mean the Reds’ chances of victory are so much higher against the NSW Waratahs at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night.