Stop the chat, Owen... you never did it with me

IHAVE huge respect for Owen Farrell both as a player and a person. He is a great guy both on and off the field. But there was too much chat from him to the referee. That must stop. He never did that with me. Every time I referee, I tell the players that there is a time and a place for conversation. If t hey want to discuss something, they have to do it in the right manner. That is one of the game’s values.

I never have any issues with Owen. Whenever I reffed him, he was always polite. He knew where the line was and never crossed it. That shows he can do it. It is up to the referees to keep strong and stay on top of things like that. We don’t want to see it creeping in.

I think he was also fortunate not to be penalised for his late hit on the Italy scrum- half. No doubt about it. He knows the ball has been passed and he followed through to let him know he was there.

It’s a penalty so England’s try that followed should not have stood. Add that to Jonny May’s, which should have been disallowed, and I think England were lucky on two occasions.

Meanwhile, the game needs to do more to stop the ‘crocodile rolls’ that led to the injury to Jack Willis. The law is pretty simple. It is illegal to wilfully collapse a ruck and you must join no lower than your hip.

You cannot target someone’s knees. Teams have been using judo coaches to teach players how to roll people away from the contact area. That should not be allowed.

It is similar to the scrum feed, they are worse than they have ever been but we let them go because that’s how rugby is played and refereeing has to be consistent.

We need to go back to refereeing the law. It is illegal to collapse a ruck. It is illegal to enter it below hip height.

That would stop crocodile rolls like this happening, which will stop horrific injuries like this one.

Meanwhile, the red card shown to Scotland prop Zander Fagerson in the Wales game was as clear as you could see.

He ran in from distance, with his arm tucked in by his side. He came in off his feet and led with his shoulder straight to the head of Wyn Jones. There was no attempt to enter the ruck with his arms out. No attempt to bind. No control.

It is a clear red card. No one should defend that. We don’t want to see that in the game.

People will have their opinions but if they think that something like that is okay, I’m sorry, but they need to have a good think about the type of game we want to see.