Loose Pass: ‘Tis clearly the season for cards, English praise and supporter punished

Lawrence Nolan

Split with referee Andrea Piardi and Harlequins players celebrating.

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the remarkable inconsistency of the cards, the trend of performance in Europe, and the disappointing actions in Munster…

Not all Christmas cards welcome

On a weekend of action when rugby, for the most part, did a fine job of reminding the public how good it can be, it also gave a couple of stark reminders that parts of the game remain a building site, while other parts still need some care and attention.

The rash of cards over the weekend – 14 yellows and one red in 12 matches, with only two matches ‘clean’ – frequently had material effects on their games, and were just as frequently difficult to explain, or certainly relativise.

Toulon fans especially must have been forgiven for wondering what more Brian Alainu’uese needed to do not to get a card, despite stooping to his own waist level into the tackle on Tom Wyatt. Wyatt, 20cm shorter than Alainu’uese, was already low going into the tackle, giving the big Samoan lock a target starting at least half a metre lower than he stands in his socks and continuing downwards. So his shoulder hit Wyatt’s head because he did adopt a reasonable tackle position; the irony being that had he stood upright, as we’re all told is a hideous crime to do these days, Wyatt might well have head-butted his solar plexus.

And yet later, that self-same Wyatt breaks through and is being tackled from behind when he runs smack into Toulon fly-half Enzo Herve, who did not stoop, did not open arms to wrap, and turned side-on to receive the contact, which was clearly to Wyatt’s head. Nothing. Not even a TMO look, not even a whisper from the referee. Where’s the consistency? Still noticeably absent.

Billy Vunipola’s red card for a wild lunge over the top was probably merited simply for the idiocy and poor technique alone, yet he was by no means the only player to find himself cleaning thin air, or close to thin air, on the other side of rucks.

It seems a new tactic has emerged for defenders behind a ruck: stand there until someone charges in to clean you out, step smartly to one side as the clean comes in and then smirk expectantly at the referee in the hope of a penalty for going off your feet. Referees are, by and large, not buying it, letting defenders know that they were seen taking evasive action, yet it ends up with actions from cleaners not worlds away from Vunipola’s.

But back to that Toulon-Exeter clash which, on a crumbly pitch and in which both sides were determined to win the game with muscle rather than guile.

We send a player to cool off for 10 minutes for what amounts to little more than being several inches taller than his opponent, resulting in head contact. And for the other 79 minutes we watch and cheer and encourage the rest of the players to hammer into each other with athlete weights and speed, every bone-rattling contact shaking around the brains in the skulls those arbitrary yellow cards are trying to hard to protect. There were 216 tackles in that match, which was played with a ferocious intensity, and yet one tackle gets sanctioned for being ‘to the head’?

It doesn’t make sense. Not to the people who know the game, not to the people who don’t know the game, and certainly not to the players, whose faces cut more and more frustrated each time the random swing of the head contact protocol axe claims a victim. Referees and TMOs desperately need more understanding of the forces at play, and desperately need more licence to apply their on-the-spot knowledge of the speed of what’s happening around them. We’re losing credibility with each long wait for TMO analysis and unjust card.

English clubs raise the bar

Despite continuous questions over both the viability of the English, Welsh and Scottish clubs financially, gripes over the exits of talents such as Henry Arundell across the channel, laments at the comparative strength of the French club squads and Ireland’s provincial system, it was English teams who emerged from the weekend with the outstanding start to the European campaign.

Seven out of eight English teams won their matches, with an even more impressive 3-1 record for those English teams away from home. Compare that to a 1-3 home record for French teams, an even more disappointing 1-1-2 record for Irish teams on a weekend when Irish fans would have been thinking realistically about a possible clean sweep, and English club rugby emerges from the opening weekend with plenty of credit stacking up in the bank.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next weekend. The European Cup is long thought to be a barometer of the respective national teams, although it rarely proves to actually be so. But given how much has been negative in England over the past couple of months, it would be worth celebrating what was an excellent weekend for nearly all involved.

Fans must not be untouchable

It is, in isolation, much ado about nothing. Nobody took a swing. Nobody hurt. No lingering unrest.

But we find it extremely important that Munster have punished that prat who thought it was a good idea to grab the shirt of Konstantin Mikautadze and heave him backwards by slapping him with a ban from attending any rugby for a while.

READ MORE: Champions Cup Team of the Week: Marcus Smith shines as Leinster, Harlequins, Bath and Bulls lead the way

Bath