Cane’s red….Kolisi’s yellow

I have looked at these two incidents several times and this is letter of the law stuff.

Dud Allende throws a horrible rolling pass in his 22 which Kriel saves and sets off. In front of him are 2 ABs appropriately lowered to make the tackle. Cane is coming at him from the side in a normal upright position not expecting to make the initial tackle.

Kriel seeing the players in front of him changes direction directly into Cane who wraps his arms around him but there is head contact. There was no intent on Cane’s  part.. and here’s the thing the experts are missing. There was no time for Cane to lower his body and get into a tackling position. It was instantaneous.

What should he have done…not wrapped Kriel? 

Yes technically he broke the law, but the law is asinine…..intent should be part of mitigation. If things happen too quickly  not allowing time for changes in body position…that too should be mitigation.

…….

Now the Kolisi incident. Savea stretched up to secure the ball and then was tackled fairly high by Vermeulen. That left little space for a second above the waist hit on Savea.

Kolisi was second to the tackle and did actually have time to try to change his body position, which he did slightly. But still Kolisi with much more force than the Cane/Kriel incident ploughed into Savea.

 The hit was partially shoulder then head. Savea was upright, unlike Kriel who was leaning forward…..Kolisi was going into a static Savea….whereas Kriel ran  into his tackler. In terms of intent this was no different to an aggressive clean out at a  ruck making head contact.

…..

So Kolisi had time for a slight mitigation. He also had time to pull out of the hit. Cane never changed body position because the runner changed direction at the last second. There isn’t even a reflex action that would naturally happen in this short space of time.

Conclusion ….the Cane incident should have been a yellow. But having set a high bar with a Cane red, the more dangerous Kolisi incident should have also been a red.  

I thought differently during the game.

Kriel was upright and took the shoulder to the face, while Kolisi was much lower in his incident and his shoulder ride up to the head, is what made the difference.

Both sanctions turned out as I expected.

I think a change in height provides much more "mitigation" than a change in direction.

And I have to agree really. If someone falls into a shoulder there's not much one can do about it. But when a guy is stepping, it's the defender's responsibility to make sure he's starting from a low position IE doing what he can to complete a safe tackle.

I go all the way back the SBW incident in the Lions series where he was literally on one knee...the attacker changed directed and then fell into his shoulder...but SBW still got red. That was a ridiculous call.

For me, if you're going in upright for a tackle, there are benefits, but it's a calculated risk and you could get sent off.

Not sure everyone was getting the same live match commentary, but an expert analyst was explaining the differences. (Someone with an Irish accent).

He predicted Cane would get a red, and that Kolisi would remain yellow.
The reasons being what Plum said. (Kolisi hit the person's shoulder and rolled up, whereas Kane was upright which led to direct head on the head contact)

Well nobody on the commentary speculated that Cane’s card was likely to become red….they did for Kolisi, but only because  of the comparison to Cane.

Neither of these incidents were intended, nor were they particularly dangerous. It’s a shame that we are so lawyered up in rugby that the showpiece game was ruined by these calls, you could watch 10 other similar incidents and get the opposite call.

I think what Moffie is basically saying here is that the red card makes this entire RWC null and void and therefore he didn't actually get enormous amounts of egg all over his pompous face because of all the dumb things he's said about PSdT . . . or Rassie . . . or that we couldn't win a RWC with DDA and Kriel as the centres and various other stupid things.

None of that matters to Moffie. He'll be downgrading this particular RWC victory for the rest of his life because Siya didn't get the exact same treatment as Cane. That's how Moffie rolls. We all know this. If we won it fair and square then it would mean that he and Doos would have egg all over their faces and heaven forbid either of these laughable and opinionated rugby noobs would admit he did in fact get something wrong.

It was all because they got the card wrong. The result is invalidated forever. We didn't actually win anything and all these wild celebrations with all my fellow South Africans has been for nothing but the amusement of Moffie and Doos.

LMAO!

Bokke!!!

Ah the petty little man introduces his personal agenda again….smarting because I pointed out his punchline  on Dud Toit was wrong. What a hissy fit that was, filled with Clever like bloopers.

But here’s the thing….everybody knows that result yesterday was 100% due to the card, and no true rugby fan would rejoice in that outcome.

Bingo!

Cane's comment on his card:

“Not unlucky. We know that collisions need to be low. If anything, I got caught a bit surprised that he stepped back in my direction. It’s no excuse. We’ve been here for two months and we’ve seen how things have been ruled. Hugely disappointed.”

Only thing is we don't really know how things are ruled, because the consistency has been all over the place. To adjust in a split second when a guy suddenly steps in your direction looks easy in slow mo, but it's probably not.

Rooi loves to wait in the shadows until he perceives an attack vector.

On the one side there are those of us that want a fair game and want to call out bad reffing because even if we're only saying it and can't change things, we want better calls and fairer games.

Then there are the dullards like Rooi, those that are far too cowardly to stick their necks out and much prefer sitting on the sidelines and waiting for a weak spot that they think they can attack.

You know, Rooi, I'm actually rooting for you. I know you're a smart guy and we're gonna be on this board for a good long while to come together. I'm hoping that at some point you focus your smarts on valuable and interesting posts rather than the usual bitchy bullshit.

And yea, you can take some notes from, Moz. He offers ideas and points of view, laying them out clearly and is open to counterpoints. I'd love to see you do that once in a while.

If Cane had lowered, he would have made full face contact with his head. It would have then looked more menacing. Rugby is not a contact sport, it's a sport of winning collisions. With bodies of different shapes and sizes they aren't going to dovetail in contact. There is no such thing as a safe collision. The reffing in this game was one of the worst I've ever seen. It was stupid, and so consistently one sided in these crippling calls that I absolutely suspect match fixing. There were numerous bad calls, numerous things the Boks got away with. I'm tired of them using intent to push one way or the other. When they want to nail a team, it's a nice grey area to have them; when they want to let them off, then it's an accident, he tried his darndest to do x, y, and z. We used to get stung consistently by this, now it's gone the other way. The game needs an overhaul, and ref performances need to be assessed. This can't be allowed to continue. It's a pro game being run and ruled by amateurs and thieves. There is no way around this, WC 2023 is tainted, marred, and a disgrace to the game. 

Suddenly Peeper is a Rassie fan….he didn’t say if we won the WC it would be in spite of Erasmus, not because of him. He can’t even remember the bs he sprouts.

Matt Dawson in an article where he is effusive about the Bok team:

‘ Did referee Wayne Barnes and his team get it right?

I was fearful that the Sam Cane high tackle on Jesse Kriel was going to be upgraded from a yellow to a red card. You were really battling to find mitigation, and in a showpiece event, you have to be very careful. 

If you do not make that a reference for how not to tackle, there will be millions of rugby players around the world thinking that is all right and then rugby takes a backward step with player welfare. 

I think the officials got it right, but in the same breath with Siya Kolisi's tackle on Ardie Savea - a yellow card that stayed as a yellow - I was really struggling to find the mitigation from the clips I saw. 

If it's that close, you have to implement the same reasoning for Cane. I don't think anyone would have quibbled at all. You could argue both cases were the same, and both cases could have been yellow, but New Zealand got punished.

You're taking about the two best teams in the world, where going down to 14 men makes an enormous difference’

I agree both cases should have been the same. Where I disagree is that because of the legal considerations both should have been red. These were rugby incidents without malice, they should both have been yellow. If we play the game for the lawyers we lose the ability to make sensible judgements and rugby becomes even more rule bound.

A mistake that had an undeniable influence on the result.

UK television commentators had it spot on - Cane’s was a red no questions asked

Their observation was that players in the position Cane found himself in should not try make dominant tackles

If you can’t get yourself into a position to get lower to effect the tackle then just hold onto the player and don’t try smash him like Cane did

Definite red without a doubt in terms of the law

The red card did not determine the outcome of the game. The AB’s had 14 men for 60 min of the game the Boks had 14 for 20 min. But the Boks lost their only specialist hooker after 2 min effectively nullifying our potential scrum dominance and raised uncertainty with our line outs.

That injury negated our set piece strength

It did negate our line out strength, but if we had a hooker on the bench we would have been fine.