Allowing ‘big hits’ like this is bad for rugby
Rugby union will forgive the scoffing next time it claims to be serious about stopping unsafe hits. All the good work of reformers is compromised when England’s Owen Farrell can escape sanction for leading with his shoulder in a no-arms tackle that levels an opponent.
In a game built on physical conquest, deciding where the line falls on “collisions” is not easy. Many of the ex-players with opinions on Farrell’s tackle on Andre Esterhuizen were caught between admiration for the brutality of the “stop” and a troubling sense that allowing such challenges is bad for rugby. This conflicted state is understandable, given the cult of “big hits”, but the sport needs to put its decisions where its mouth is if a shocking injury count is to be reduced.
Farrell passed two major tests. First, the referee, Angus Gardner, decided on review that England’s best player was not guilty of tackling without his arms. Then, the citing commissioner saw no evidence of a possible red-card offence and therefore took no further action.
You can see why rugby was dreading a scenario in which a decision that had already been run through the television match official was overturned a day later by a higher “court”. Football displays a particular phobia of “re-refereeing” games. In this instance, football would have pointed out that the incident had already been seen and dealt with in the game.
But this reinforcing of the no-case-to-answer position is not the neat outcome rugby might think it is. Farrell’s supporters say Esterhuizen was running at him so hard and fast that he bounced off the England co-captain before arms could be wrapped round the ball carrier. In this reading of events, Farrell was intending to use his arms and would have done so had Esterhuizen not rebounded off him like a tennis ball hitting a truck. This unconvincing theory opens a new line of reasoning in which referees have to judge what would have happened a few frames further on in the film.
It also strays into intent. The most damning aspect of Farrell’s tackle is that he leads with his shoulder, which hits Esterhuizen around the clavicle and smashes him back, and down. At least one Springbok is seen pointing to his own shoulder bone to indicate to Gardner how Farrell had gone into the collision.
In a pulsating match, Farrell was immense, especially in the last 10 minutes when England were clinging on. The first name on any England teamsheet, he pays no heed to self-preservation. The greater the physicality, the braver he becomes. He also plays on the edge of the laws, which is often a virtue, but not when he cleans someone out in front of a big television audience who have been told again and again that rugby takes player welfare seriously.
On the one hand, the sport bemoans the absence of 16 England players through injury or suspension. It frets about concussion rates, fixture overload and attrition on the training ground. At times top-level rugby seems too much for the body to withstand. Intensive gym work, designed to make people stronger, has the opposite effect of leaving the sport less safe because impacts increase.
In the build-up to Englandsouth Africa, Matt Dawson, the World Cup-winning scrum-half, tweeted a video of him being smashed head high by the Springbok Corne Krige in 2002, with the comment: “I’d love to say I remember it well but he knocked me into the next day … I played on for 10/15 mins calling all my club moves … unfortunately I do fear there’ll be plenty of consequences in the long-term for me. #brutalgame #notformykids”.
Asked about Farrell’s tackle, Dawson said that in his day it would have been considered a classic “big hit” but acknowledged it was questionable in today’s supposedly safety-conscious climate. Two weeks ago, Andy Goode, on The Rugby Podcast, said: “You watch Owen Farrell tackle. Very upright, swings the shoulder. I worry that, if he doesn’t change his technique – and this is why World Rugby are trying to change the thought processes and the technique of people to protect the players, and the heads and concussion, all that stuff – Owen Farrell might be one who gets sent off.”
England, understandably, want no shadow over a fine, stabilising win. But beyond the cauldron of Twickenham, rugby might like to consider how Farrell’s tackle will have looked to the people it is trying to convince on player welfare. Not good, is the answer.
If even a World Cup-winning scrum-half writes the comment “not for my kids” at the end of a tweet, then Farrell’s tackle is, at the very least, a penalty.