TALKING POINT: Red cards have too much impact on narrative

The delight at learning that World Rugby is considering a global trial for the 20 minute red card once trialled in South Africa and still in operation in Super Rugby was tempered by some of the northern hemisphere reaction.

I’ve read pieces where writers that side of the equator, and former players, have scoffed at the idea, which will require a 75 per cent majority to be passed at a World Rugby council meeting in May. The argument against the trial is based on a perception that red cards do not ruin matches, as we in the southern hemisphere claim, and that replacing a red carded player after 20 minutes is a threat to safety.

The antagonists argue that the idea is being forwarded from this side of the equator because our disciplinary attitude towards high tackles is questionable.

Both those claims are themselves questionable. Firstly, the Springbok discipline with regards to tackling legally, meaning low, is one of the reasons they continue to reign as World Cup champions. Secondly, a suggestion that a player still under threat from being banished from the game himself will suddenly become more gung-ho about tackle height and sacrifice himself, and in the process reduce his team to 14 men for 20 minutes, doesn’t make any sense.

Thirdly, and as importantly, while games might not always necessarily be ruined, and the Emirates Lions proved that this past weekend with their excellent win over Connacht when reduced to 14 men for most of it, a red card always introduces a narrative that overshadows all else.

STATS REQUIRE MORE SCRUTINY

There are probably people who read me regularly who get irritated that when I reference the round ball game for examples, it is always Liverpool that is drawn on. Apologies for that, but Liverpool do happen to be the team I watch more than any others as I am a Liverpool supporter. If I watched as much soccer as I watch wall to wall rugby for the purposes of my job, there’d never be any opportunity to go outside and get a suntan.

So here goes with another Liverpool example - in their recent FA Cup quarterfinal against Manchester United, Liverpool ended the game playing 11 men against 10. That was because shortly before the end, the United player who scored the winning goal in extra time was red carded for taking off his shirt to celebrate. He’d already seen yellow, so the referee had no option.
The game was effectively over, and yet somewhere I spotted a headline that referred to 10-man United, with the insinuation they’d overcome a red card to win. Which is complete garbage.

So the stats that were thrown out by one English writer to justify his argument that red cards don’t ruin rugby games, and which attempted to refute SA Rugby CEO Rian Oberholzer’s contention that they do, do require more scrutiny. According to those stats, sourced from Opta, since 2010 there have been 44 red cards in test matches involving Six Nations and Rugby Championship teams, and the team reduced to 14 men have won 22, drawn three and lost 19 of those games.

It makes a big difference to the argument at what point of the game the red card came. If, as is often the case, it was in the dying stages, like it was in the FA Cup quarterfinal, then it would hardly have influenced the result. If it came when for example when a team was already well ahead of their opponents, it also makes a difference.

And the position the player plays and the relative strengths of the teams makes a big difference too. Morne Steyn being sent off in a game between the Bulls and Sharks a few seasons ago was effectively game, set and match.

Leinster could probably lose a player to a red card in 10 games against Zebre and win every one. Ditto Ireland or the Boks against Romania or any other tier two nation.

WORLD CUP FINAL AFTERMATH PROVIDES EXAMPLE

Yes, there are many instances where teams that lose players to red cards win. The Sharks beat Crusaders in Christchurch in 2014 under Jake White and the fact that they did it with 14 men after Jean Deysel had been sent off before halftime added to the narrative.

But there are often times when a red card overshadows and detracts from the narrative, and for that you only have to think back to the aftermath of the most recent World Cup final. Some of those who say that red cards don’t destroy matches were convinced after the Paris World Cup decider that the All Blacks were the better team and deserved to win on the basis that they played 50 minutes with 14 men after the red carding of Sam Kane.

I have a different view, and it isn’t just because I am a South African but from how the game was going before the All Black skipper was sent off. The Boks were bossing it until the Kiwis lost their captain. After that the All Blacks played like they had nothing to lose, and the Boks, sensing the potential ignominy of losing to 14 men, took on the more negative mindset of defending their lead.

Is my reading correct? Who knows, it can’t be proved, but the point is that there are lots of New Zealanders and neutrals who will forever place an asterisk alongside that World Cup final result.

And yet, again this is said by a South African, the Kane transgression was not heinous enough to merit such distortion. It wasn’t grave enough to warrant the post match controversy and speculation. Had the 20 minute red card rule been in place, the Kiwis would at least have been able to replace him after that period of time.

KWAGGA’S RED CARD RUINED 2017 FINAL

It would have removed the debate and made Siya Kolisi’s 10 minutes in the bin for an offence that to many looked the same as Kane’s, less of a post-match talking point than it became. When red cards are discussed, and the issue of them ruining games is raised, the 2017 incident that saw Kwagga Smith sent off in the Super Rugby final between the Lions and the Crusaders always goes to the forefront of the mind. A massive game, a lot at stake.

Would the Crusaders have won had Smith not been sent off for being clumsy rather than malicious? We don’t know. But what that incident did was rob that game of the 15 versus 15 contest that rugby is supposed to be about and after the sending off you sensed for everyone watching it was game over. And it wasn’t because Smith kicked an opposing player in the head or punched him.

The same can be said of the early match sending off of Wales talisman Sam Warburton in the 2011 World Cup semifinal in New Zealand. I was there, the interest seemed to go out of that game after Warburton received his marching orders. The game was definitely ruined. And it was a match of massive gravitas.
Conversely, eight years later, when France and Wales met in a World Cup quarterfinal in Japan, there was an incident that did’t qualify as one without malice. It was a brain fart from Sebastian Vahaamahina, who callously and viciously struck Aaron Wainwright with his elbow. France had momentum before that, but lost it when they went down to 14 men. The French player cost his player the game, but it was right he was sent off, for there was nothing marginal or accidental about what he did.

MAYBE MORE DEBATE IS NECESSARY ON WHAT EQUALS RED

Maybe former top referee Nigel Owens has it right. The debate shouldn’t be about the sanction that goes with a red card, but what merits a red card. A deliberate act of thuggery should always see the player banished for the rest of the game and too bad for his teammates. That’s just the way it has worked in every era, though of course before television arrived there was much turning of blind eyes.

When the red card is for something accidental, and you could argue that Asenathi Ntlabakanye’s red card against Connacht qualifies as that, then the 20 minute sanction, with the red carded player not making a reappearance but a reserve replacing him, makes complete sense. For no other reason than that rugby just sees too many red cards these days and, as Owens appeared to hint, for very little.

And it’s not the ruination of the game itself that matters, for it can’t be measured empirically anyway, but the way it distorts the post match narrative. The Boks, by having their achievement undermined by them playing against an All Black team disadvantaged in numbers, suffered as much from Kane’s banishment from the field as their opponents did. At least in the eyes of outsiders.