Cape Town – Sanzaar CEO Brendan Morris couldn’t hide his excitement in announcing that the 20-minute red card trial will be reintroduced in the upcoming Rugby Championship, but I don’t share his sentiments.
Morris started off on Wednesday on the “great decision” that is backed by the four nations – South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina – which would allow a team to replace a player who has received a red card after 20 minutes with someone else.
“As a group, we firmly believe the integrity of international matches is very important and that wherever possible matches must be a contest of 15 versus 15,” Morris added.
“Within the context of the games’ laws, Sanzaar believes that a 20-minute red card allows for a significant deterrent to deliberate acts of foul play, while it also protects the contest of 15 on 15, which is what our unions, broadcasters and fans are telling us is important.”
But while it’s all well and good to want to have 15 players on each side for as long as possible, at what cost will it be?
Firstly, it is debatable whether this trial – which has also been done in Super Rugby 2020, 2021 and 2022, as well as last year’s Rugby Championship – is a “significant deterrent to deliberate acts of foul play”.
Why would it be? You could get Brodie Retallick punching Eben Etzebeth, for instance, and once the All Black lock is given a red card, someone else can come on off the New Zealand bench after 20 minutes. Does the punishment fit the crime? Not at all…
A lot has been said about not wanting to punish the whole team for an individual player’s indiscretion, but the last time I checked, that player is part of the team. So, why shouldn’t the entire group experience the difficulty that comes with playing with only 14 men for the rest of the match?
The other bugbear I have with the 20-minute red card is that it almost serves as a cushion for negative play, with the team knowing that they will get a chance to recover and be back at full strength after 20 minutes.
You could get one team under the cosh in the scrums or struggling to stop the opposition’s driving mauls, so they try to collapse in both instances – with the worst outcome being a red card, which practically elapses after 20 minutes.
Those deliberate knock-downs out wide when a team is on their way to scoring a certain try is another problem in the game – although it hasn’t been necessarily well managed. When a player is trying to catch the ball and knocks it on, why do most referees hand out a yellow card? It should just be a scrum to the attacking team for the knock-on.
Only when a defender deliberately slaps the ball down, and has no chance of catching the ball, should a yellow card be the result – and even a red card when it’s blatant. That would encourage attacking play and discourage the defence.
Morris added that Sanzaar will conduct a formal research project on the trial during the Rugby Championship, which will be shared with World Rugby, with the aim being to “gather the necessary information that allows the 20-minute red card trial to be accepted into the full laws of the game in the future”.
But I really hope that day doesn’t come…
IOL Sport
* The views expressed are not necessarily the views of IOL or Independent Media.
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