Yellow cards to cut out the ‘football culture’

YELLOW cards for diving will be introduced in rugby for the first time at this World Cup in a bid to crackdown on the ‘football culture’ creeping into the game. John Jeffrey, the chairman of the World Rugby match officials selection committee, warned that players will be sin-binned for simulation or feigning injury. ‘Diving would be ungentlemanly conduct,’ said former Scotland flanker Jeffrey. ‘It would be a straight yellow card.’ Jeffrey said any player appealing to match officials to award penalties could also face sanctions, while citing commissioners could cite a player for such offences in what would amount to a post-match yellow card. Repeat offenders also risk a judicial hearing that may result in a suspension. Jeffrey said: ‘There is a culture creeping in — I call it the football culture — of simulation; people appealing to the referee, players — and it has happened a couple of times — diving. That is going to be sanctioned very heavily in this tournament. We are the showcase of our rugby event and it’s very, very important that we keep our values there and referees have been asked to sanction very heavily on that.’ There have been some high-profile diving incidents in rugby: Bryan Habana in the 2014 Heineken Cup final after the most innocuous of challenges by Owen Farrell; Toulouse player Yoann Huget in a Champions Cup encounter with Bath in January. ‘It was probably the biggest brain fart of my career,’ admitted Habana. ‘I don’t think I’m the first player to do it and I probably won’t be the last.’ Susan Ahern, the World Rugby head of legal and a disciplinary officer at the tournament, warned players that television technology will be employed to catch offenders. ‘When it comes to citing there really will be nowhere to hide,’ she said. A real effort was made yesterday by World Rugby to suggest there is also nowhere to hide for any players using performanceenhancing drugs. Doping in rugby is clearly a problem. More than a third of the athletes currently serving doping bans in the UK are from rugby union. Indeed, since 2009, 62 of the 145 sanctions have been from rugby union and rugby league. Supported to some extent by the same evidence, officials suggest the problem is more prevalent in junior rugby; essentially young players trying to achieve the size and power to succeed in the senior ranks. Former France international Laurent Benezech is among those who have argued that doping is a big problem in top level rugby, too. Yesterday David Ho, World Rugby’s anti-doping manager, said the budget for anti-doping in the sport had increased by 30 per cent, although he refused to reveal how much the international governing body spends on doping. ‘Our long-term strategy is one of effective, intelligent testing,’ he said. ‘We introduced the athlete biological passport programme last year. ‘Our testing figures aren’t secret. Testing is expensive. We run a programme that is as effective as we can with the budget we have.’