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We grew up playing rugby when it was very hard to be sent off. A single punch wouldn’t do it (unless the referee was the target). A judo throw, a tackle to the face, a slap or climbing up a ruck back: you might get a scolding lecture. Go and sin no more.
But if you were sent off, you were gone. To the cold showers, off the pitch, not even in the stands; off you go to sulk in hell and tell the quiet, appeasing assistant coach what you were doing or trying to do when you threw that final elbow.
There was no Purgatory. You were excommunicated. Cancelled.
Then came the cards. Coded. Cardinal sins and minor transgressions. The cards started to burn a hole in the refs’ tight pockets. They’re uncomfortable. Rigid. As they fish them out, and decide if it is mustard or paprika meal you made, the refs become the stars. The censorious centre. St Peter at the gate.
Everyone watching now has terse predictions for their mates: “Red for mine” or “Yellow all day” or “to be consistent, just a penalty” or “play on, FFS!”
Now, refs like to cloak their colour calls in committee speak. A framework. A process. Doctrines develop and adapt to political realities. Everyone has bosses. Even the whistle boss of the game.
Cards proliferated, even if the infractions diminished. The stigma diminished. Wallaby tyro Michael Hooper has the most cards of any current Test player, but no one considers him dirty.
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Cards for failing to bring in a leaping interception attempt or being a weak prop are the same shade as shoulder charges or trips or calling the ref daft.
Red cards, the codified version of being sent off, are increasingly reserved for head games. The head.
We only have one head. It contains us, our brains, yes, but also our minds, our consciousness, our selves.
Only a brute could read of the plight of Ryan Jones, the great former Welsh loosie, and dismiss the problem as softness.
Rugby has never had harder G-force impacts than now.
Caleb Clarke running full speed into a properly riled up Eben Etzebeth equals a motor vehicle collision deploying airbags and sending cars and people to repair. And then they get up and do it ten more times that game.
The depth of studies are also better. We have more data. More truth.
You owe yourself a read of this study, with a deeply Aussie tone.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease linked to a person’s history of repetitive head impacts (RHI).
The repetition of impact to the head and neck is the major issue. One big knock, no matter how it might seem, pales into insignificance when compared to five thousand ‘normal’ impacts from maul, tackle, carry, and training drills.
Limiting contact is the only way to truly mitigate rugby’s harm to the head.
Helmets encourage higher impacts. Having played, I can assure you the helmet allows a young man fully animated to choose to hit a knee or hip with the head due to the false sense of imperviousness.
But rugby is not rich.
Class action litigation is here. Unions in Great Britain cannot afford NFL- type settlements.
Banning contact until 14 or 16 and banning full contact practices and empowering player unions and the like all take money out of sparse coffers.
So, the move is toward mitigation by card.
We won’t build speed bumps; we will have cops ticketing speeders. That’s our defence plan.
Will it work? Will it depress future claims, drive down the furore, keep mums sending kids to play it (and pay it), and be sustainable?
Carding our way out of this is not a perfect solution, but it is one part of one side of one mitigation approach. Regulation.
In truth, having the right tackle height (the baseball strike zone) is also part of it, and there, coaches who prized dominant ball and all tackles with manic line speed to snuff offloads, will be the target.
But over time, teams learned tactics to use to stay in games where they were shorthanded.
The effect of a full red card has lessened over time at the top levels. At the Twickenham match I went to this year, only a couple of minutes into the Six Nations test, English lock Charlie Ewel knocked out vital Irish leader James Ryan, a player with worrying RHI (Repetitive Head Impacts). The red card galvanized England and their fans.
Their scrum ran roughshod over Ireland (fair or foul, it matters not for this point) and it turns out 4-5 scrum penalties sort of equate to an early card.
The stadium wasn’t hushed. Late into the match it was pumping as an upset loomed.
Any scrum afforded England the chance of an entry into the Irish 22.
England fell short and ran out of gas (Eddie Jones has had red zone and bench usage issues).
But even a 2:00 red card is not “the end of the affair.”
There are studies on this that show a card is roughly worth 0.5 points every ten minutes. But set piece wobbles cost you the same or more. A bad call at ruck can turn a whole match.
And now, consider another theme.
The Northern Hemisphere has greater influence on game governance than the South, and that hold has tightened with SARU’s slow, inevitable realignment.
The Northern sensibility is to have a true red.
Australia (and Eddie Jones) and New Zealand like a 20-minute red with a replacement.
South Africa is one of the least carded teams in world rugby over the last decade; they are agnostic.
World Rugby wants to look tougher on CTE-causing actions, which red cards increasingly overlap with, and have rejected the SANZAAR experiment so far.
The 2023 World Cup will have true reds and probably the most yellows ever, even as tackle height is gradually but clearly getting more in the strike zone.
What’s happening now with the SANZAAR versus World Rugby 20 v 80 red debate?
Each body perceives a different existential threat to their realm.
Australia has to compete with the gladiatorial State of Origin. New Zealand is a small market and is losing kids to rugby league. Argentina tends to be carded a lot, fairly or unfairly. Tidy South Africa doesn’t really take a position on 20 v 80, but they are always seeking money (although they put out a statement saying they backed SANZAAR’s decision).
The South has hands out, needs full stadia, rarely gets them unless it’s the All Blacks in town, and CTE class action hasn’t blossomed (and likely won’t in Argentina, South Africa, and New Zealand).
The North has big crowds, sells out all Test matches against any team, has bigger broadcast cash, billionaire owners, and those deep pockets (together with certain laws) attract lawyers and claims. To them, the optics of the South lessening the penalty from a potential 80 at 14 to only 20 is awful in timing and tone.
The overall splitting and isolation of NZ/OZ from the larger rugby world (lessened by 2027’s big dance) is likely.
Maybe that’s what this is: a Declaration of Independence.
Or maybe it’s just cash hungry thinking versus deep pocket target fears. The market and the court.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.