The farcical red-carding of England fullback Freddie Steward in Dublin on Saturday showed again that rugby’s bid to make the game safer has changed the game for the worse, writes SIMON BORCHARDT.
When the Tri-Nations became the Rugby Championship in 2012, the Six Nations responded with a new tagline – ‘Rugby’s Greatest Championship’. While that was debatable at the time, it’s certainly not now. The Six Nations is, without doubt, the sport’s best tournament outside of the World Cup, while the Rugby Championship has become a bit meh.
This year’s Six Nations made for excellent viewing. It featured the top two teams in the world – Ireland and France – a Scotland side that rose to fifth in the rankings during the tournament and a rejuvenated Italy who were unlucky to end the campaign winless.
It was with a real sense of excitement that I settled in front of the TV on ‘Super Saturday’ to watch the final round of the Six Nations.
The first match, between Scotland and Italy at Murrayfield, was only decided in the final play of the game when Scotland survived a late Italian onslaught on their tryline, turned over possession and scored a length-of-the-field bonus-point try.
The second match saw France back up their record thrashing of England at Twickenham the week before with a bonus-point win against Wales in Paris that meant Ireland had to beat England in Dublin, or lose and pick up a bonus point or two, to secure the title.
Ireland were expected to hammer the Poms, but as the match moved into first-half stoppage time the hosts led just 10-6 and an intriguing second half was on the cards. Could England spoil the Irish party and help France retain their European crown?
We will never know, because England fullback Freddie Steward was red-carded after colliding with opposite number Hugo Keenan in what a few years ago would have been regarded as just another rugby incident and play on.
Ireland wing Mack Hansen had knocked the ball on, Keenan ran in to claim the loose ball and when Steward realised he was going to collide with Keenan, he made an instinctive, split-second decision to turn his back and brace for contact. Steward’s arm made contact with Keenan’s head, but the list of ‘mitigating factors’ was long, so when referee Jaco Peyper referred the incident to TMO Marius Jonker, most expected a penalty or – at worst – a yellow card.
Red card for Freddie Steward pic.twitter.com/N6nVNx2qQN
— RugbyLAD (@RugbyLAD7) March 18, 2023
Match officials have been instructed by World Rugby to clamp down on head-related incidents in the sport in a bid to reduce the risk of concussion, so an almost apologetic Peyper began his speech to Stewart with “in the current climate …” you knew what was coming. “You’re upright, you went into contact, you had time to turn your shoulder, direct contact to the head is a high level of danger,” Peyper explained before pulling out a red card.
It was a red card that ruined the title-deciding match of “Rugby’s Greatest Championship”.
Fourteen-man England did well to stay in the game and reduce the deficit to just one point early in the second half but, as is almost always the case in situations like this, their disadvantage eventually took its toll as Ireland scored three tries in the final quarter to complete a comfortable victory.
As the Irish celebrated a well-deserved Grand Slam, I sat in front of the TV feeling cheated. Once again, a rugby match had been sacrificed on the altar of ‘player safety’.
Two months ago, I criticised the RFU’s attempt to lower the tackle height in English community rugby to waist height and said players (and other rugby stakeholders) would have to speak out against it to save our sport. So it was encouraging to see the Twitter outrage that followed Stewart’s red card.
England prop Joe Marler: “Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. In fact, it’s complete and utter bollocks.”
England centre Jonathan Joseph: “Absolute shambles.”
Former Ireland prop James Cronin: “How is that a red? The game has lost all common sense.”
Former England wing Ben Foden: “Anyone who thinks that was a red card has never played rugby. If Steward didn’t pull out it would have been much worse for Keenan. Yellow at worse.”
I’d like to think that the abovementioned Englishmen would have said the same thing had the roles been reversed and Ireland had been red-carded, because this is not about a bad decision going against your team. This is about the need to universally condemn World Rugby for changing our game for the worse in a misguided attempt to reduce the risk of concussion.
We are constantly told that concussion poses an existential to rugby when in fact the greatest threat comes from rugby administrators who purport to want to make the game safer and grow the game.
The only way to get the suits to back down and depower the safety police is for rugby players, coaches and fans to stand up and say, “Enough is enough. We want our game back”.
– Borchardt is managing editor of SA Rugby magazine