Steward bracing himself for contact….get’s red carded. When you feel imminent contact and you turn your shoulder to avoid getting a head in your face, is vastly different to offensively sticking in your shoulder.

With the new rules every game is at risk and the match is over unless Ireland do a France. The crowd cheer…but for what?

Agreed. Steward extremely unlucky there. I do like the way Peyper explained it though, "current climate".

If there is a duty of care for the players then both Keenan and Sexton should have gone for HIA after clutching their heads when going down. 

J oke really.

With the new rules every game is at risk and the match is over unless Ireland do a France. The crowd cheer…but for what?

They cheer because they want there team to win and this makes it easier.

They need to do something about these red cards. So many of them are just a timing issue and almost none of them are intentional.

I feel sorry for the ref, as what choice do the refs have, you heard Piper say it "in this climate" its a red card. The climate needs to change. We have had years of this now, where the defense of these red cards is that the players will learn eventually. No they won't, its all split second in real time decision making.

Red cards should only be reserved for deliberate and reckless player. The more borderline incidents should be yellow and then perhaps a few match suspensions if deemed warranted.

If there is a duty of care for the players then both Keenan and Sexton should have gone for HIA after clutching their heads when going down.

Keenan did go for HIA straight away which was the correct call.

It's funny how those moments of reckless and malicious play don't receive a red. The Wiese headbutt on an Aussie, Kolbe wiping a player clean out of the air, and Kolisi with two throat slams wiping opponents out. There needs to be some common sense to these calls, some level of consistency. Right now it's like refereeing from an early build of an EA Sports title. 

How many balls does Von Poor Feet have to botch at the base before they replace him…to say nothing of his kicking.

Meanwhile a head high tackle on Watson is ignored.

Sexton departs on his metaphorical shield….great scenes.

Now Willis does deserve a yellow card….how much better a game would it have been if Steward, for a much less intended act, got the same.

How do these people think? How does a spear tackle get a yellow card, yet the other incident gets a red? All in the name of safety is it? 

Imagine a WC final decided by a red card. With the players really hyped and the new rules it seems horribly likely.

We've already had a World Cup decided by disastrous reffing, it was in 2011. Two Kiwi throat slams before they were awarded the winning penalty. That World Cup was the biggest hack job in the history of all World Cups in every sport. A red would just be more overt. 

Then there was the de Villiers forward pass which took us out against Oz.  Speaking about the long dart….blown up by a ref who didn’t understand a 20 metre pass would drift forward…. Or chose not to understand.

I'm inclined to blame Lambie for over running his line. Jean would have nailed him cleanly otherwise, but it was still a bad call. There were many bad calls. There was a bad call after Habana made a clean break in the second half. The breakdown was a total farce. Don't ask me how Pocock got away with taking Brussow out like he did. That was a very bad demonstration of how to ref a fair game. You can see when there is an agenda when one side is perpetually nailed all game long, that when the attacking team - who world rugby said should be given the edge in these calls - was overwhelmingly superior. It's long overdue that the way the game is reffed is revamped from the bottom up. One of my pet peeves right now is how any ball that hits the deck is called forward no matter what. It's usually one-sided as well. 

There are so many officiating mistakes in rugby…,there was a classic yesterday. One of the Irish players bobbled the ball into an Irish player right in front of him and then recovered it. It was a small error but a clear knock on….the ref, the commentators and all the other officials missed it and shortly thereafter Ireland scored.

The moan about the Aussie defeat was partly justified since Lawrence was removed from reffing further WC matches  and then  rewarded by him being made head of the New Zealand referee development program.   I said partly because the Springbok squad for the 2011 WC  was totally deficient and most of the players were way past their best and they had a hopeless coach.    The said game showed a pathetic and totally ineffective team performance and was in fact a disgrace of SA Rugby.    

The fact is the 2015 WC squad was even worse than the 2011 one.    Although the 2011 squad could use back-up players they were not properly used to help the team to get through the 2011 series - the 2015 squad contained 31 players of which 8 players were unusable and there on holiday in the UK and they were never really usable playing from the bench as well.   The idiotic game plan and squad and team selection destroyed any chances of the Springboks to beat the AB's that year.        

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Rugby is a highly political game, it remains to understand what in this climate means. Could mean a lot.

A lot indeed as the red card was rescinded.

I said partly because the Springbok squad for the 2011 WC  was totally deficient and most of the players were way past their best and they had a hopeless coach. 

Oh dear, Mr Clever... I thought you like Erasmus and his little slave. 

Red card rescinded..... Ref error or rule error?

But surely a game changer.

There were so many officiating errors on Saturday. 

Well done to Ireland though .

To many rules…and to many calls and decisions to make for these Refs to actually maintain…..reffing calls has actually been getting worse over the the last 4 years…what is world Rugby smoking??