Centre can have no complaints – Marler and Farrell lucky to escape
Manu Tuilagi’s red card was absolutely the right decision by referee Ben O’Keeffe and his television match official, Marius Jonker. They took their time reviewing it but really had no other choice. Simply put, it was a no-arms tackle – ie a shoulder charge – where first contact was made to the head of the ball carrier, George North. That is automatically a red card, with mitigation not considered.
On the replays, you can see how Tuilagi actually tucks his right arm close to his body, which makes it impossible to even attempt to wrap it in the tackle. That ensures he is in serious trouble, and once he makes contact with North’s head, a red card is inevitable.
As I say, mitigation was not considered due to the nature of the tackle, but you could see that Tuilagi may have been caught out slightly by the fact North dipped shortly before contact was made as he was tackled by Henry Slade. If Tuilagi had been trying to wrap his arms, that might have saved him, but as it was a no-arms tackle, he had to go.
England finished with 13 on the field as Ellis Genge was shown a yellow card (one which was probably a bit too late, as both Tom Curry and Kyle Sinckler were guilty of deliberate infringements in a period of sustained Welsh pressure beforehand) shortly before Tuilagi’s tackle on North, but I actually felt two other men in white could also have spent 10 minutes in the sin-bin.
The first was Joe Marler, for making contact with Alun Wyn Jones’s nether regions. There was a lot of amusement on social media following the incident, and it was clearly done in a lighthearted manner, but that is not the sort of behaviour World Rugby would want to see on a rugby pitch. A few years ago a similar type of incident played out in the NRL in Australia with a player called John Hopoate, who developed a habit of attempting to insert his fingers up opponents’ backsides. He was duly suspended as a result.
I wrote this week about how backchat to referees was eroding the values of the game, and I would put this in the same category. This may sound like it is taking the whole incident a little too seriously, but as a referee you have a duty to uphold the spirit of the game.
Contextually, imagine if this was swept under the carpet and everyone started doing it. Good luck with trying to manage that!
As such, I believe that Jonker should have taken action and instructed O’Keeffe, who understandably did not see the incident, to take another look on the big screen. If he had done then I think a yellow card would have been the right call.
That said, you do need to take the nature of the incident into account when considering if any further sanction should be taken against Marler.
World Rugby’s laws state a minimum 12-week ban for “grabbing, twisting or squeezing” the testicles, but I think they refer to a far more serious offence – one where you intend to hurt your opponent, which was not the case here. I also thought Owen Farrell could have gone for a series of infringements in the first 24 minutes. The first was for pushing North after the Welshman knocked on close to the line, resulting in some needless handbags. He pushed North again as he was following up a kick-chase (barely a couple of minutes after O’Keeffe had warned him) and was finally penalised for being caught on the wrong side.
Part of the art of being a good Test referee is knowing when to upgrade a sanction for the benefit of the game, and despite having a reasonably good outing, I thought this was an area where O’Keeffe could improve.