Why it’s time to examine the disciplinary process
THERE are but a few certainties in life.
Death, taxes and rugby disciplinary hearings resembling a DFS sofa sale.
Or, in other words, offering hefty discounts seemingly all year round.
The jokes around rugby’s disciplinary process have rumbled on for some time. Bring the right biscuits for the committee and you’ll get half the ban. You get the drift.
Mitigation has become a buzzword when it comes to these sort of things, as has the main source of it – remorse.
Once again, that little word has been to the fore in recent days following another high-profile ban.
Wales international Liam Williams has been hit with a threematch ban following his red card against Cardiff Blues.
The Lions Test star was dismissed by referee Craig Evans after driving into a ruck with his head and making contact with the head of flanker Shane Lewis-hughes.
A disciplinary hearing saw Williams assessed under law 9.20 (b) which says a player must not make contact with an opponent above the line of the shoulders.
The incident was found to merit a mid-range entry point, which warrants a four-week suspension. There’s no argument with that.
There was no intent from Williams, but that’s not a mitigating factor.
However, the judicial officer determined that there were some factors, such as his remorse, that warranted mitigation of one week.
Now, there are, to my mind, a couple of problems with this.
For starters, beyond the example of Williams, any player is likely to ‘feel remorseful’ ahead of a hearing when the odds are heavily stacked that the ban will be reduced.
It’s very, very easy to feel remorse in that situation.
That’s not to say Williams didn’t feel genuine remorse on this occasion.
He apologised to Lewis-hughes on the pitch, while it’s understood that’s he’s also apologised to everyone at the Scarlets. It’s fair to assume he realises he made a mistake.
But here’s the second issue with the whole mitigation of remorse: when Williams was dismissed, he chimed to Evans “We’ll start playing touch, is it?”
Regardless of his remorse elsewhere, the overriding emotion from Williams that would have been seen by the widest audience was one of sarcasm – questioning the referee’s authority with the sort of regrettable sarcastic comment that adds fuel to the ‘game’s gone soft’ brigade.
Again, no doubt that Williams regrets that comment, but it’s hard to reconcile that comment being the most widely-seen part of this dismissal and a mitigation of remorse subsequently being applied.
In many ways, it just goes to show the fact that remorse should ultimately have little place in deciding bans.
Take Owen Farrell seeing a 10week ban for a high tackle that left Wasps fly-half Charlie Atkinson unconscious halved last year.
Why? Because he had a positive testimonial from a charity.
The whole idea of remorse, when it’s effectively become a meaningless certainty that largely stops cases being judged on their merit, has made it totally redundant as a form of mitigation.
Just as another word – intent – now has no place in the conversation when it comes to discussing the sort of collisions that saw Williams sent off, so too should the word remorse be one that is removed from the lexicon of rugby.
With all that is going on in the sport with head injuries, words matter more than ever.
And words like remorse are frankly totally empty given how they’re currently used.