SBW should know the rules by now
OPINION: Is it time for a Summer School stint for Sonny Bill Williams?
The consummate code hopper’s yellow card that sparked the penalty try against France was hardly the kind of crime which once would have earned an offender a date with Monsieur Guillotine at Paris’ Bastille.
Williams deliberately batted a high, crossfield kick into touch in the All Blacks’ in-goal area with French wing Yoann Huget lurking.
He was banished to the bin by referee Angus Gardner, who also awarded a penalty try after several video replays.
As coach Steve Hansen said, it didn’t cost the All Blacks the match - they still beat Les Bleus by 20 points.
He reckons reporters should go easy on Williams, who otherwise had a top game in Paris.
Fair enough.
Of more concern, however, was Hansen’s admission his star midfielder ‘‘doesn’t know the rules because he was playing [rugby] league’’.
Granted, rugby union’s rule book is a little more arcane than league’s simpler, slimmer volume. But why doesn’t SBW know the rules?
Yes, league was his game till he went to join Tana Umaga Toulon at 23. But this is his eighth year in professional rugby union - bookended by a couple of seasons back in NRL with the Roosters.
Surely, that’s enough time for a fulltime professional player to bone up on the nuances of the 15-man lark? It’s not as if he’s shearing sheep or digging drains as a day job.
The 2017 Laws of the Game download prints out at 214 pages about the same as the latest Lee Child thriller any seasoned frequent flyer would start and finish on an inter-continental flight.
University swots or students struggling with a particular subject are known to go to Summer School to get a head start for the next academic year.
If a plumber discovers his apprentice doesn’t know a flange from a faucet, he’d say: ‘‘Back to night school, son.’’
Maybe SBW, who’s adding new skills to his game at the age of 32, needs to sit down with the rugby rule book over his holidays to make sure there’s no risk of a brain snap leading up to the next World Cup.
No need for Hansen to do a refresher course on this particular rule, however.
It’s a fair bet he’s known most of his life - or the last 35 years at least - that you can’t slap a ball into touch.
Hansen was part of the Canterbury squad which held the Ranfurly Shield from 1982 to 1985.
Like most red-and-black land residents of a certain vintage, he’d have forever etched in his frontal lobe the grainy images of the epic defence against Auckland at Lancaster Park in ‘85.
Hansen won’t need reminding that Auckland racked up a 24-0 lead at halftime before Canterbury came storming back in the second half to close to 28-23.
With time ticking away, Canterbury five-eighth Wayne Smith launched an up-and-under into the Auckland in-goal area, much like France’s Anthony Belleau did the other day.
An Auckland hand - attached to All Blacks wing John Kirwan batted the ball into touch.
Fifty thousand Canterbury fans screamed ‘‘penalty’’. They’re still waiting. Referee Bob Francis blew for no-side and the shield changed hands for the start of Auckland’s fabled eight-year tenure.
So when Steve Hansen says: ‘‘I knew what Sonny did wasn’t legal you aren’t allowed to pat the ball over’’, you’d better believe him.
Perhaps SBW had to go through what he did at the weekend - the long trudge to the Stade de France naughty chair - to reinforce that rule for all-time.
So, when Owen Farrell launches the ball into orbit in the final seconds of the 2019 World Cup semifinal, SBW will remember his Kirwan Moment in Paris.