Barrett red card shows deep split in the game
The most significant moment of last weekend’s rugby wasn’t England defeating Wales, or the England RWC squad announcement, but the red card awarded by Jérôme Garcès in Australia’s defeat of New Zealand.
It highlighted perfectly the deep gulf between World Rugby and those that coach, play or comment on the modern game.
Australia were going through the phases, and as Michael Hooper went to ground, Scott Barrett in trying to clear him out made contact with his head and neck.
Hooper was falling to the ground, so an argument can be made for some degree of mitigation, although irrespective of that, Barrett led with the shoulder and elbow.
Sky replayed the incident several times, we heard clearly what Garcès said as he explained his reasoning, and then we heard the views of Sean Fitzpatrick, Michael Lynagh, and most controversially, Will Greenwood.
Garcès’ reasoning was impeccable: contact with the head/neck, made with the shoulder/elbow, and with force, so he had no option but to show a red.
At the subsequent disciplinary hearing Barrett pleaded guilty, and the red card decision was deemed
to be correct and a midrange level offence: he got six weeks off, reduced to three.
The wording of the judgement said it was in line with ‘World Rugby instructions that dictate that any incident of foul play which results in contact with the head and/or neck must start at the midrange level’.
In the discussion of the incident, Sky’s pundits did not cover themselves in glory, particularly Greenwood who made an ill-considered rant about Garcès. Fitzpatrick was more measured but clearly didn’t agree with the decision, and said that for it to happen just before halftime, and affect the game when it wasn’t a clear-cut red-card offence, was an issue for him.
The response to that is obvious: it was clear-cut, the disciplinary judgement confirmed that, and the suggestion that the timing was in any way relevant is just daft. As for the result being affected, that was down to Barrett and his act of foul play!
However, what Greenwood said was shocking. He started with the nonsense that if it was a red card then there could be ones awarded ‘at every breakdown’ – codswallop! We then had the usual caveat, ‘I don’t want to undermine referees, but…’ which always comes before someone has a pop at a ref. Greenwood went on to say ‘every time Garcès appears in an international match, you know there’s going to be an incident, and he’s going to hide behind the laws’!
Hide behind the laws? Just think what that means. Garcès doesn’t make the laws, as a referee it’s his job to apply them, and what Greenwood was seemingly suggesting was that an international referee should ignore what the laws and World Rugby’s guidelines tell him to do! If Greenwood has a gripe, it’s with World Rugby, and you would hope he has given serious thought to apologising to Garcès.
However, there is a serious issue heading into the RWC. Everyone pays lipservice to player welfare, but when a referee does something to punish a player for foul play, he gets pilloried.
Eddie Jones labelled the sending-off ‘ridiculous’, but then in an inconsistent way called for consistency! One minute he was objecting to Barrett’s red, and the next complaining that there weren’t two reds in the match against Wales!
In the same way that coaches are sometimes said to have lost the changing room, World Rugby appears to have lost the coaches, and with five weeks to go to RWC, goodness knows how they can redress the situation.
Matches will be affected during the tournament by yellow and red card decisions – they’ll be by the letter of the law, and coaches will whinge.
However, if we’re serious about player welfare then coaches need to spend the next five weeks getting the message through to their players. If the laws get broken, and someone gets sent off, then that’s nothing to do with the referees, it’s down to the player making a bad decision, and the coaches failing in their job.
Those who think the Barrett decision was wrong need to ask themselves a simple question: if shoulders/elbows to the head, applied with force, don’t get severely punished, will parents continue to let their kids take up rugby? Players need to be protected or we won’t have a game at all.