Trouble on cards at World Cup
Rugby great Brian O’Driscoll fears ‘‘the big hit is gone’’ from the game as the crackdown on dangerous tackles continues at the World Cup in Japan.
O’Driscoll was a TV pundit for Ireland’s 47-5 win over Samoa that confirmed Joe Schmidt’s team for the quarterfinals.
Ireland’s win came at a price with Bundee Aki red-carded for a dangerous hit that will surely take him out of the playoffs.
Samoa weren’t angels either with hooker Seilala Lam yellowcarded for a challenge on Jacob Stockdale in a busy night for Australian referee Nic Berry.
Former Irish captain O’Driscoll lamented: ‘‘The only thing you can say for the future is the big hit is gone – that big collision.
‘‘It’s going to be all about leg tackling. The big shot is going to be ruled out of our game.’’
O’Driscoll was commenting on Lam’s yellow card in particular, sensing an injustice.
‘‘Samoa will feel they have been hard done by in this World Cup. It’s their fifth yellow card. And I have to say with this one I don’t know what the tackler is meant to do if a player dips that low,’’ O’Driscoll pointed out in his analysis for ITV.
‘‘Look at how bent Lam’s knees are on the collision — yes, he’s made contact with Stockdale’s head but Stockdale has led with his head into the collision.
‘‘It’s almost impossible for Lam to dip lower than that. In my eyes Lam’s done everything right.
‘‘The mitigating circumstance is that Stockdale has dipped into the collision, and the referee, on the basis of what we’ve seen so far at this World Cup, is probably right, but it feels wrong.’’
O’Driscoll said players and coaches needed to re-educate themselves around this crucial area now. But he warned it wouldn’t be easy given the speed that rugby is played at.
‘‘What players are going to need to do is control that last halfa-metre and the speed at which they go into the collision,’’ he said.
‘‘We have talked about the big
‘‘It’s going to be all about leg tackling. The big shot is going to be ruled out of our game.’’
Brian O’Driscoll
hits being outlawed. I think you have to be in control of that space when you commit to it, because
some varying movement of the head, popping up where you don’t anticipate it, could be the difference between you being off the pitch or staying on it.
‘‘Defensively, it’s not in the mindset to stand up and go: ‘I’m not in a comfortable space here: I had better soak this one’.
‘‘You just have to get your timing right earlier to make a better decision. We are talking about hundredths of a second. It’s a brutally hard thing to do.’’
■ A former international coach says ‘‘terrible officiating’’ has hit the World Cup harder than the arrival of Typhoon Hagibis.
Australian-born Matt Williams, who coached the Waratahs and Scotland and is now based in Ireland, lashed out at rulings by officials and hoped it would lead to a ‘‘much-needed overhaul’’.
‘‘The inconsistent interpretations by the TMOs and the onfield officials, in every area, from red cards for shoulder contact to the head of an opponent, to ruling when a scrum feed is not straight, to multiple missed offsides, makes this World Cup the worst officiated I have ever witnessed,’’ Williams wrote in his column in The Irish Times.
‘‘Referees are human and like all of us, can make errors, but the inconsistencies, match after match, has distracted us from the wonderful tournament that has been delivered by the Japanese.’’