New high contact edict still just a guide? Brett McKay the ROAR

There was a little bit of discussion around World Rugby’s new ‘zero tolerance’ stance on contact higher than the shoulders in the weeks heading into Round 1 of Super Rugby, with opinions equally nervous and worried on what they might happen when first used with competition points on the line.

Overall, most of us seemed to agree on the need to eliminate any contact with the head and neck from the game. Rugby has come on leaps and bounds when it comes to attitudes around head injuries and concussion, even just in recent years.

But what might a game look like if all high contact is penalised, and cards are dished out everywhere, we wondered?

Well, after the first weekend of Super Rugby, the answer to that question is ‘not that different’. But I’ll come back to this soon.

First, a recap.

Back in mid-December, you’ll recall that World Rugby announced that they had “redefined illegal (high) tackle categories and increased sanctions to deter high tackles via a law application guideline. This will apply at all levels of the game from 3 January 2017 introducing minimum on-field sanctions for reckless and accidental contact with the head, effectively lowering the acceptable height of the tackle. The guideline will be supported with a global education programme.”

A reckless tackle is now one in which “the player knew or should have known that there was a risk of making contact with the head of an opponent, but did so anyway,” and carries a yellow card as a minimum sanction.

Accidental contact is where “a player makes accidental contact with an opponent’s head, either directly or where the contact starts below the line of the shoulders,” and includes situations where the ball-carrier slips into the tackle. A penalty will be awarded as a minimum sanction.

‘Accidental contact’ are the key words here, and words we heard uttered over the weekend, but I’ll come back to that too.

For Round 1, I counted 13 yellow cards handed out across the nine games. Red-Sharks, Waratahs-Force, and Cheetahs-Lions all had two yellow cards each; Kings-Jaguares saw the yellow pointing skywards three times.

Highlanders-Chiefs was the only game where no card was dished out, which was interesting in itself.

Of those 13 yellows, only two were for high contact under the new edict: Reds lock Kane Douglas’ old-fashioned neck roll in a crudely attempted clean-out against the Sharks, and teammate Karmichael Hunt’s solid but now-illegally high hit toward the end of the same game.

Referee Nick Briant even used the term “accidental contact”, telling Hunt words to the effect, ‘He’s fallen into the tackle, but you’ve still caught him above the shoulders’.

Four months ago, it would’ve been an unfortunate penalty and slap on the back for an effective tackle that just happened to slip up, but under the new wording, this was a tackle from the explanatory notes: accidental contact, ball-carrier falling, impact slipping up above the shoulders.

And you could still mount a decent case that a penalty under the new edict would’ve been enough, particularly in light of other incidents that went un-carded over the weekend.

From the round just completed, we’re now to believe that those two tackles were the only ones yellow card-worthy under the new zero tolerance approach handed down by World Rugby in December.

There must have been upwards of 1500 tackles made over the weekend, but only two of them were deemed high. I have a little bit of trouble believing that.

Three more come immediately to mind. Sharks lock Etienne Oosthuizen made neck contact arguably worse than Douglas’ only a few minutes before Hunt was pinged. Oosthuizen was cited and subsequently suspended for the two weeks for striking Rob Simmons earlier in the game, but this incident I’m thinking of wasn’t even penalised. I’m tipping Hunt was partly frustrated by that lack of action when he made his tackle, and the Reds captain at the time – James Slipper was off by then – even raised that point as Briant showed his yellow card to Hunt.

In the Waratahs-Force game, Israel Folau was penalised in the 20th minute for a remarkably similar hit to Hunt’s, and with Ben O’Keeffe also offering the same explanation – ‘the ball-carrier slipped into the tackle’ – but no card was shown.

Force centre Billy Meekes did his very best to separate Michael Hooper’s head and body, a la Douglas, but again it was penalty only.

There were countless others across the weekend; the Highlanders-Chiefs game threatened to boil over several times, such was the level of niggle both sides got away with. That there wasn’t a single card in this game for a high shot under the new definitions was laughable, and explained why a lot of the niggle carried on.

And that’s going to be the way it is for the next few weeks. It’s obviously going to take time for zero tolerance to take hold, because clearly some referees have a much better handle on it than others.

Blues coach Tana Umaga back in January aired concerns about consistency of applications, but he also stated quite clearly that his players “are just going to have to adjust” their tackling techniques. Turns out he was just as right about the former as he was the latter.

On the weekend’s evidence, the referees have just as much adjustment to make as the players.

The Chiefs v Highlanders game was squeaky clean so of course there were no yellow
But seriously, I agree with the concerns about the consistency in applying the high tackle edict/guideline. It's rough on the players to always have to figure out what the ref decide and there are so many such situations now - the scrum put in is one obvious example. Hopefully the ref will clarify his approach prior to each game & eventually we will get consistency across games.

But were there any tackles.....or just the usual touch rugby you guys play? Hell even Sevens is proving too rugged for NZ teams.

 Ha ha Mozart, did you watch any rugby this past weekend? Perhaps those little blokes on the wee stormers team impressed you or the snort less bulls?

 A follow up to this story in Planet Rugby.  Unsteady Eddie caught with his pants down.
Loose Pass

Date published: February 28 2017

Unsteady Eddie

“Underestimate Italy and you’ll get caught with your pants down.”

As quotes go, it makes even Romain Poite’s brilliant “I’m the referee, not the coach” look decidedly humdrum. Why? Well, because it fell from the lips of Eddie Jones on the eve of Sunday’s feast of ruckless rugby at Twickenham – or Eddie ‘Pants Down’ Jones as he shall henceforth be known.

Yet the most striking thing is not how Pants Down underestimated Italy, but how he seemingly managed to underestimate rugby itself.

It’s no secret that the laws of our game are labyrinthine. Sections of the oft-edited tome in which they reside are decidedly opaque, other areas appear outwardly inexact, and some clauses are downright cryptic – and we’d refer you (once again if we really must) to the act of scoring a try and how ‘pressing down’ does not necessarily require ‘control’.

There’s no fault in all this – it’s pure design. The beauty of rugby resides in the vast areas of grey that lie between black and white. It’s a game for thinkers in which invention and canny interpretation of the laws are not only rewarded but actively encourage.

If this is not your own interpretation, check out page one of the law book itself. Conceding that rugby “appears to be a mass of contradictions”, the preamble goes on to summon the spirit of  William Webb Ellis – he of the fine disregard for rules – by concluding: “That the game should have its origins in an act of spirited defiance is somehow appropriate.”

So how dare Pants Down berate the Italians for their own act of spirited defiance? How dare he call for the laws to be revised? And how dare he accuse Poite of looking “flustered” and of “losing his perspective of the game”?

We’re rather hoping he meant none of it. Indeed, his post-match antics had more than the whiff of diversion to them. He was lobbing smoke-bombs in an attempt to detract from the fact that his record-chasing disciples had been exposed as half-wits. That much was written across his face. He had the look of a fox who’d had his burrow turned over by a gang of chickens in broad daylight.

The only question he really needed to answer is why he did absolutely nothing about it. A message could and should have been sent on to the pitch following Poite’s first shout of “Just a tackle!” – and that came after about 60 seconds of play.

But it took 35 minutes for England – in the shape of James Haskell – to approached Poite for “some clarity on the ruck thing”.

It seems slightly crabby of us to be picking on England given the fact that they subsequently recovered and went on to win handsomely. But the fact remains that there was never any real need for them to stage a recovery.

The Cassandras who are claiming that ruckless rugby is an endangerment to rugby are missing a fairly obvious point. Namely, it’s a rubbish tactic. If there’s no defenders in front of you, why are still you trying to pass the ball behind you? Just run, Forrest, run!

When England’s assorted Gumps finally worked this out, they made very short work of the Azzurri. But those first 40 minutes exposed a major flaw that all-comers will now seek to expose: the English appear wholly unable to think on their feet.

So why was there no intervention from the sidelines? Three simple words – ‘pick and go’ – could have been sent out with the first water bottle. That would have fixed it. But England’s finest were left to fend for themselves.

Was it a test? Was the lack of sideline assistance deliberate? The England boss has repeatedly stated that World Cup-winning sides need “eight or nine guys who are consistently leaders”, and perhaps he was waiting for those guys to show themselves on Sunday.

They did not. Pants soon came down.

Having an arsenal of devastating ‘finishers’ is all well and good. Jones must now take a hard look at his starters.