Rugby’s yellow card ruins the game; send it to the bin

When one of the forwards is banished, the scrum can't cope.

It’s time the red card was shown to the yellow card in rugby.

When referees issue a yellow card and send some poor mug to the sin bin, I’m inclined to abandon seat and go water the pot plants.

The yellow so unbalances a team it often means games are no longer a contest and the team down to 14 starts slowing everything down.

Fortunately, there are referees such as Aussie Angus Gardner who are reluctant to issue yellows for flimsy offences.

Typical was the attempted tackle by Jordie Barrett for the Hurricanes last Friday. Barrett went in for a legit tackle with his arms, but as he did, his opponent hopped up and took a tumble.

As the commentators mulled over a likely yellow for tackling a player in the air, Gardner used common sense after watching replays and just got on with the game.

There was the crazy one where the Highlanders’ Malakai Fekitoa clearly unintentionally tipped over the Crusaders’ Bill Havili in their match in Dunedin. The referee, instead of using Gardner-like discretion, saw red and issued green and the Crusaders gained huge benefit by having an extra man as they streaked to victory.

When one of the forwards is banished, the scrum can’t cope. And because so many yellows are dished out, it has become the easy option.

In club rugby this year, scrums must pack down with eight men. So when Varsity lost flanker Nathan Tweedy, binned against Feilding Old Boys-oroua on Saturday, centre Hamish Northcott had to join the scrum, which left the backline a defender short.

Rugby league leads the way in this after previously being binmad. While they seldom employ the sin bin now, except for punching, they do put players on report to be dealt with later.

Now soccer is thinking about introducing rugby-style sin bins. Don’t do it – stick with your system where multiple yellows incur suspensions.

Cooky back in limelight

Isaac Cook, who set a world milking mark of 5000 cows in 12 hours last week, was the same Cooky who bounded around for the Te Kawau and Manawatu rugby teams.

He now has four kids and his two oldest boys play for the Te Kawau under-10s team, which he coaches.

He was one of the biggest props around in schoolboy rugby when in the Palmerston North Boys’ High School first XV. Behind his school textbooks was often a rugby magazine and as far as we know he was never sprung.

In 1997 he left school to play senior rugby for Te Kawau, until halfway through he was summoned back to school by one Joe Schmidt.

Cook went on to play 21 games for Manawatu between 1999-2000 and 2004-05. He also had two stints with Coastal and Taranaki (18 rep games) and played for Canterbury B and for Southend in England.

He was in the Hurricanes colts when Grahame Mourie lured him to Coastal.

Cook played in Manawatu’s infamous loss to the British Lions in 2005, a dark day when the Lions won by 103.

Cooky has been farming for the past four years and weighs in at about 130 kilograms, 5kg above his playing weight. He is a dairy farm manager at Santoft for the O’brien Farm Group and one of the owners is John O’brien, another former Te Kawau frontrower.

Cook’s milking record was set in three rotary cowsheds and while he put the cups on the cows, automatic teat cup removers did the honours at the other end.

Athletics appears reignited

It’s exciting times for New Zealand athletics.

Not only do we have Eliza Mccartney igniting interest in the pole vault, we have the shotputters and now a world-class 100m and 200m sprinter in Joseph Millar.

Even without Nigerian fasttwitch muscles, he should at least be a match for many of the West Indians at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast next year.

And good on javelin thrower Ben Langton-burnell for not forgetting his roots.

Even though he has to live and train in Hamilton, he still competed at the nationals for Manawatu-wanganui, where he won the national title.

Once was scrub

Not long ago, manuka was derided as much as gorse and possums.

Back-country farmers, especially in places like Whanganui, brought in Fijians as scrubcutters. And by scrub, they meant manuka.

The influx of Fijians began in the late 1940s and often helped bolster rugby teams. Now the industry has turned full circle, with Fijians coming in to plant manuka. Yes, with the manuka honey boom and its so-called health benefits, there is a move to carpet marginal country with what was scrub.

At the Central Districts Field Days last week, there were at least three exhibitors promoting manuka. How times change.