Red or yellow? Card conundrum over head contact hits Super Rugby

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Incidents involving the Highlanders in the last two rounds of Super Rugby have highlighted the fraught area of the policing of head contact in modern rugby. Until recently the rogues gallery of players red-carded in test matches was relatively small and red cards were reserved for only the most extreme forms of foul play. Since rugby began to prioritize the reduction of head injuries by more severely treating any form of head contact, that number has exploded. Many players have joined the notorious group sent off in tests for actions which might previously have been deemed accidental or inadvertent. Only 16 players were red-carded in the first eight Rugby World Cups and three of those in one match between South Africa and Canada in 1995. Since the more stringent policing of head contact began, 16 players have been sent off in the last two World Cups. Rugby has an obligation to protect players for head injuries, the lasting consequences of which are only now beginning to be understood. But there are concerns the sport’s ultimate on-field sanction has to implemented with consistency. On Friday, the Highlanders lost their influential winger Caleb Tangitau to a head injury in the late stages of their match against the Auckland-based Blues. The Dunedin-based Highlanders had been mounting a strong comeback and the loss of Tangitau stalled that rally, allowing the Blues to hang on 47-40. Tangitau was injured in a tackle in which his head made contact with the shoulder of Blues tackler Zarn Sullivan. The tackle appeared at first glance to clearly meet the threshold for a red card: direct shoulder contact to the head. But after watching replays and discussing the incident with the television match official, the referee ruled there was mitigation in that Tangitau already was falling forward when the contact occurred. He reduced Sullivan’s sanction to a yellow card. Highlanders head coach Jamie Joseph was unimpressed. “Moments like that really count,” he said. “We get a guy knocked out so what’s a red card? If that’s not a red card what is?” Joseph had good cause to raise the questions. A week earlier, the Highlanders lost hooker Henry Bell to a yellow card late in their match against the ACT Brumbies. The decision again played a major role in the outcome of the match. Bell was attempting to tackle Brumbies lock Nick Frost and there was head-on-head contact which the referee determined merited a yellow card. But replays suggested it might not have been Bell but Frost who initiated the head contact. In making his decision, referee Ben O’Keefe said “It’s head-on-head, we have a degree of danger that meets the yellow threshold so it’s going to be a yellow card.” The law clearly states that a dangerous tackle includes tackling or attempting to tackle a player above the line of the shoulders “even if the tackle starts below the line of the shoulders.” But the Highlanders had some cause to feel aggrieved that Frost, rather than Bell made the head contact unavoidable.

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