Opinions will always be divided, but there seems to be general agreement that Wayne Barnes is the best referee of our time. Now that he’s retired, he seems to feel freer to speak his mind. It would be good to pay attention to the game.
This month he appeared on TNT’s highlights program for the first round of the Champions Cup and offered his thoughts on the cards that he and his colleagues have had to discuss for many years.
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When asked how often he showed a red card to players who clearly did not want to offend (he showed the card because he had to), he refrained from answering “always”, but his diplomatic response was clean. “I don’t think any player deliberately went on the field to harm another player,” he said. “I think the players misunderstood some things.”
Another way to put this is that the game is too fast and physical to guarantee that any one player will always get things right. So all we do within the protocols is to guarantee that we will send the players. “The game needs to have that discussion,” Barnes said. “Last season there were 112 cards in the Champions Cup. We have to ask ourselves the question – and this is a good time to ask right after the World Cup – do we want teams to be constantly reduced to 14 or 13 men?
Poignant words from the man who just a few months ago presided over the first men’s Rugby World Cup final to be shown a red card in front of a global audience of millions, a year after the first in the women’s category. Sam Cane was the unfortunate scapegoat in the men’s competition. But it’s just as touching to think about who he was.
Based on the split-second timing and draw of the results, it was decided by the dugout review officer that his offense would be upgraded from a yellow card to a red card, while Siya Kolisi’s offense remained on a yellow card in the same match. Cane is understood to be the All Blacks’ captain and open winger. Kolisi is the Springboks’ captain and open winger. This means they are two of the best tacklers the game has ever seen.
We are all familiar by now with the cries of armchair critics who insist that players “just need to learn to tackle lower”. If two of the best tacklers the game has ever seen can’t guarantee they’ll never catch a player by the head, no one can.
There are apologists who would like you to believe that this era of red cards began as recently as the 2019 World Cup, with the introduction of a “high interference sanctions framework”. This was nothing more than a guide to help referees achieve consistency (and spectators understand what’s going on). Anyway, in 2021 the framework has been replaced by the “head contact process”. Maybe we should believe that red cards for high tackles were invented back then.
In the real world, the protocol was formalized nearly seven years ago on January 3, 2017, with much more draconian wording and less room for mitigation than what now applies, and a first red card to Saracens’ Richard Barrington followed that weekend. . Unofficially, the policy predated even that. There were nine red cards over two European weekends in December 2016, and it was later revealed that referees had been instructed to officiate quietly, as if the upcoming protocols were already in place. By the way, the first time the issue of red cards for accidents rather than intentional offenses was discussed on Breakdown was in April 2015.
So the best players in the world had at least seven years to learn how to compete at lower levels. Red cards still keep coming. And they will never stop until this oppression ends, because none of the crimes are intentional and are not preventable.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that players are tackling lower. Gone is the cult of the “big hit”, that chest-high shot celebrated by the entire rugby community just 15 years ago. It is no longer pleasant and this is undoubtedly a positive development. It didn’t and won’t make one iota of difference in concussion cases, but the celebration of great success was an ugly sight for a game that supposedly prioritizes player welfare.
We didn’t need to send a single player away to make this change. Training and coaching are the biggest inputs, and an actual legislative change to support this would also help, reducing the legal height of a tackle from shoulder height, where it has always remained, to somewhere around the armpit or sternum. An avalanche of penalties that could even lead to another red card for an accident is preferred.
Cane was sitting with his head in his hands when news of the red card broke on that fateful night, just as Tom Curry (England openside, one of the best tacklers the game has ever seen, etc.) did during the opening weekend. tournament. What was supposed to be the best night of Cane’s life was in ruins, as was his credibility at the sport’s showpiece event. Lydia Thompson has spoken poignantly about how the red card she was shown in the women’s final almost derailed her.
These are the people betrayed by sport. Rugby is dangerous at elite level and never will be. Applying retroactive justice after ugly accidents never works. The referees are not in the seats. They are at the heart of the action in this dizzyingly fast sport. They can see that these players mean no harm, and they don’t like having to send them away. Let Barnes’ words resonate where they matter.
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