Bath v Wasps - Cripple Fight!

[Which Tyler]

Bath's kit man also up before the beak - for language directed towards the ref.

Has rugby developed a real problem with ancillary pitch-side staff?
Does the kit-man really need to be pitchside in the first place? Are we going to start seeing neutral water carriers?

[I R Geech]

It was a forearm into the neck/chin. And he flew in from a distance. No mitigating circumstances, high degree of force and danger, direct to the head. That's a red.

In which case, I blame watching it once on a mobile phone screen. My mistake.

Puja

Actually, scratch that. Just watched it again and I don't see the direct head contact. His forearm is wrapping around the shoulder/neck/chest area - it's not particularly pleasant, but I don't see a strike to the head.



Puja

I know you’re Tigers, but come on. Arm is round the neck, shoulder is straight into the back of the head, both at force. A forearm wrapping around the shoulder/neck/chest area isn’t going to spark St Jimmy out for a minute or so.

[Puja]

In which case, I blame watching it once on a mobile phone screen. My mistake.

Puja

Actually, scratch that. Just watched it again and I don't see the direct head contact. His forearm is wrapping around the shoulder/neck/chest area - it's not particularly pleasant, but I don't see a strike to the head.



Puja

I know you’re Tigers, but come on. Arm is round the neck, shoulder is straight into the back of the head, both at force. A forearm wrapping around the shoulder/neck/chest area isn’t going to spark St Jimmy out for a minute or so.

Hey, I've got no love for Williams - he was a bloody liability when he played for us as well. To my eyes, the shoulder goes over the top of the head and the knockout blow is the top of Gopperth's head on Williams's chest. Smacking the top of the head and compressing the neck is just as effective a night-night button as a punch to the jaw, possibly more so because bodies aren't optimised for being hit by a large force from the crown downwards.

I'm not saying it's a nice tackle or a clean one. I'm merely saying that I don't see a leading shoulder or elbow to the head here. I've seen far worse clearouts, several of them by Williams. The knockout strikes me as an unfortunate accident rather than anything actively dirty and I wouldn't have objected to a yellow there.

Puja

[FKAS]

I think Puja has a point. There's no direct shoulder to head contact. He gets the red because Gopperth is out cold and it's both reckless and he wraps round the neck which is never a good look. Not sure he'll get out of the ban though.

[Digby]

The ref does note he targets head & neck, and okay he might miss the head but he does connect to the neck. Actually he gives himself two shots at the neck, the arm coming in around the front of the neck and then the top of the arm/shoulder to the back of the neck. Not sure why there's a distinction being made between head and neck

Also he's not bound to anything so he's entirely illegal in his play anyway, though there is as a standard no requirement to be bound before assaulting someone

[Which Tyler]

For my money...
He's targetting the join of the neck to the shoulder - which is also the first contact.
But in doing so, he's also wrapping around very close to the throat, and impacting the top of Gop's head with his chest (after first contact).
Ref doesn't make any distinction between head, and neck (unless I missed one, ref's talking about "head and neck" as a single unit, TMO only really mentions "neck").

It's well deserving of a card, and I've no problem with it being red; though I also wouldn't be up in arms if it was yellow. If Gopperth hadn't been KOs by this, there's a good chance it wouldn't have been looked at, and play would have continued without comment. IMO it's no worse than clear-outs you see 3-4 times in every match (though it's a little clearer for the TV cameras).

I would love for these clear-outs to be refereed out of the game; but showing a card once or twice a season isn't going to cut it, and feels like it's carding the consequence, not the action.

[Mikey Brown]

Reffing the consequence rather than the action is a good way of putting it, to some extent, but these do seem like exactly the kind of reckless charges that we need to get rid of. Maybe it doesn't hit the head directly, but that feels more like a matter of chance than because Williams has taken any care or precision in his actions.

I don't really see a way out of this situation - in a game where putting your head/neck in the exact spot this may happen is rewarded as good play, and the opposition need to do everything they can to shift you.

Am I imagining it or is there some sort of rule about keeping your head above your hips in the ruck? I'm not even sure if that would help anything or just mean there are more direct collisions to the top of the head where a player is bent at 90 degrees over the ball.

[Puja]

Compare and contrast to this, which got a yellow despite it being a clear shoulder to the head, with enough force to bowl the player over.



Also, play it on mute if you don't want to be infuriated by Dallaglio's word salads.

Puja

[Which Tyler]

Yeah, that's definitely shoulder to head.
Shorter run-up than Williams had, but a more dangerous contact point.

As I say, most of the time these get lesser punishments, or outright ignored

[I R Geech]

Reffing the consequence rather than the action is a good way of putting it, to some extent, but these do seem like exactly the kind of reckless charges that we need to get rid of. Maybe it doesn't hit the head directly, but that feels more like a matter of chance than because Williams has taken any care or precision in his actions.

This. If he did, he did. If he didn't, he wasn't really trying too hard not to. Do the current laws around the ruck indirectly result in these sort of clear outs?

(I don't know as I spent my entire career avoiding being anywhere near rucks)

[Mikey Brown]

Compare and contrast to this, which got a yellow despite it being a clear shoulder to the head, with enough force to bowl the player over.



Also, play it on mute if you don't want to be infuriated by Dallaglio's word salads.

Puja

I get your point, but how does anyone still have the energy to be frustrated by inconsistent refereeing decisions around the breakdown. The whole thing is such a lottery, with dozens of different offences to look out for at once.

Not that it's Christie's fault exactly, but I have some sympathy with Lamb watching the Sarries players routinely hugging the Quins tackler on the floor and winning a penalty for 'not rolling away'.

I'm all for consistently carding these dangerous clearouts, but I still don't know what the fully safe and sanitised version of a ruck is actually supposed to look like.

[Peej]

It's possible to think both things are worthy of red cards. Doesn't lessen what Williams did, which is come with huge downward force onto the neck. he also managed to put two players in headlocks whilst attempting a clearout.

[Raggs]

Guess the argument was lower force so not as dangerous to hit the red card threshold? But then it was a shoulder to the head with no mitigation, so red anyway.

[Puja]

Reffing the consequence rather than the action is a good way of putting it, to some extent, but these do seem like exactly the kind of reckless charges that we need to get rid of. Maybe it doesn't hit the head directly, but that feels more like a matter of chance than because Williams has taken any care or precision in his actions.

This. If he did, he did. If he didn't, he wasn't really trying too hard not to. Do the current laws around the ruck indirectly result in these sort of clear outs?

(I don't know as I spent my entire career avoiding being anywhere near rucks)

Not unreasonable - like I said, I've got very little sympathy for Williams, as he has long form of charging in shoulder and elbow first and seems incapable of laying off the cheap shots. The fact that he didn't make direct head contact was more luck than judgement.

The laws around the ruck are largely irrelevant to the conventions and guidances around the ruck which, at the moment, do encourage these kind of clear outs. A ruck according to the laws is supposed to be contested entirely by players on their feet, forming a bridge over the tackler and ball like a scrum. Players bind in and the idea is to drive the opposition backwards until the ball is behind the back foot and the scrum-half can play it away. It goes without saying that this does not happen in real life. The problem is professionalism - players tackle higher so the tackled player finds it more difficult to roll, supporting players are faster so they form a ruck before the tackled player can roll away, and the spectacle of raking and aggressive rucking with your studs is anathema to a widespread audience and so was banned entirely. As such, players can easily get trapped on the floor and have no particular incentive to move out of the way, at least not the same incentive as when lying there meant a lock tapdancing on your back in metal studs. As soon as there are several players on the floor who you are not allowed to stand on, you cannot have a pushing contest over the ball.

However, rugby is a game where competition for the ball is paramount, so there had to be a new main method by which the defending side could turn over the ball. It used to be that getting the ball to the ground was the tackled player's responsibility and the defender only had to let go of the ball if they themselves were off their feet - if you were on your feet, you were allowed to take the ball, as long as no ruck had formed. This led to sides doing two man tackles, where one person went low to bring them to ground and one person locked onto the ball and stayed on their feet, showing that the tackled player wasn't releasing. It basically meant a guaranteed turnover if you could lure someone to run into a two-man tackle and led to the abomination that was the 2007 RWC where having the ball was far too risky and no-one went through more than 2 phases before belting the ball up in the air.

Thus, the law change went through where "assist tacklers" were defined - anyone who had their hands on the player as the tackle was being made was counted as an "assist tackler" who had to release before competing for the ball, even if they were on their feet. This instantly changed the game and made it worthwhile having the ball again (and empowered the all-conquering All Blacks side of that era). It also created the little seagull flap of the arms that we do now to show that we've released.

Unfortunately, this has created a position where a jackaller cannot lock onto the ball before the tackle has completed and it is thus on the ground. This means that the optimal position for a jackaller is bent over, arse in the air, hands grubbing on the floor. Worse still, the prevalance of lineout manouevres has meant that a penalty is worth a lot more than a turnover, so you often see players locking in on the ball, with absolutely no intention of taking it away from the tackled player, while signalling frantically to the ref that they're being prevented from taking it away, and means that a player on the ground often gets dinged for "holding on" when they let go of the ball ages ago. The IRB have given directives to help alleviate this, saying that players can't put their hands on the floor and be driven backward onto the ball, and this year's "You have to actually lift it to be given the penalty", but it still remains that an optimal position for a jackaller is face-down, arse-up, head and neck exposed.

I do have a tiny tiny bit sympathy for Williams, because I don't know that there is a legal way to clear Gopperth out there. There are certainly ways that don't involve sprinting in from 5 metres out and launching yourself like you're Captain Chaos, but I think all of his options are various flavours of illegal.

I don't know how it can be fixed. However, one answer that won't work is the "Just apply the original laws and it'll all be fine" as there is no bringing back the pushing contest rucks unless you are willing to bring back raking as an incentive not to lie in the middle and trip people up. We've got here by a series of logical steps that solved a problem that we had at the time and we can't go back unless we have another solution to those problems that will work better.

Puja

[Which Tyler]

The laws around the ruck are largely irrelevant to the conventions and guidances around the ruck which, at the moment, do encourage these kind of clear outs.
snip

[Timbo]

Guess the argument was lower force so not as dangerous to hit the red card threshold? But then it was a shoulder to the head with no mitigation, so red anyway.

The Head Contact Process from world rugby dictates that you can only get a red card if it’s deemed the incident involved a ‘high degree of danger’. Medium with no mitigation’s is a yellow, low danger is penalty only.

Both incidents were reffed perfectly correctly imo.

Williams- has there been head contact (includes neck and throat)? Yes. High degree of danger? Yes. Any mitigation’s? No. Red card.

Lamb? Head contact? Yes. High degree of danger? Not for me. In rugby terms I would say medium is fair. Any mitigation’s? No. Yellow card.

[Timbo]

I'm all for consistently carding these dangerous clearouts, but I still don't know what the fully safe and sanitised version of a ruck is actually supposed to look like.

There isn’t a fully safe and sanitised version of a ruck. Like you say it’s virtually unimaginable. I actually think the current process is really quite good. It’s a nice balance between a strict framework and allowing for a referee to make a sensible (hopefully) judgement. My personal taste would be to make slightly more allowance for certain head/neck contacts to be go unsanctioned and deemed ‘rugby incidents’, but I get why that’s not the case too.

[Which Tyler]

No remorse/apology?
No guilty plea?

[Puja]

No remorse/apology?
No guilty plea?

You can't get remorse/apology without a guilty plea (understandable - you can't really claim to be genuinely sorry for your actions if you then go on to say that you don't think you did anything wrong) and I'd imagine he's made the argument that there wasn't a direct shoulder or elbow to the head and therefore it shouldn't have been a red card. Foolish decision - the PtB are never going to let him off in that situation, so he would be better off with pleading guilty and bringing it down to 3 weeks with an extra week for doing a training course.

Puja

[Which Tyler]

You can't really apologise for something you feel you didn't do - but can still show remorse (IMO). You can be sorry for the consequence, that your action hurt a man, whilst also claiming that your actions were legal.
"I don't think I hit him in the head, but I'm sorry he was injured in the collision"
Either way - I thought a guilty plea with appropriate apology is just the obvious thing to do - he wouldn't have got the full 50%, given his record, but he may have had 1 week knocked off (and potentially a 2nd for attending the lecture)

[Peej]

Has Lamb been cited?

[Danno]

Has Lamb been cited?

Just Williams and the kit man
https://www.englandrugby.com/governance ... -decisions

[Puja]

Has Lamb been cited?

Just Williams and the kit man
https://www.englandrugby.com/governance ... -decisions

I am astonished at that. No idea how he wasn't sent off or how he wasn't cited. It was direct, forceful contact to the head - I don't buy the argument that it was low force, as it was enough to knock him on his arse.

Not really that bothered one way or the other, but it's another example of our bizarre disciplinary system.

Puja

[Digby]

The really daft thing with Lamb is what rugby is asking is that the player at risk of injury stays down to ensure the sanction goes up. And that's just perverse.

Much could be cleared up if they required players to be bound before playing, though that would come with different issues

[Mr Mwenda]

Much could be cleared up if they required players to be bound before playing, though that would come with different issues

That'd definitely reduce injury risks unless they do themselves a mischief trying to free themselves. Although it might lead to a rather static game.