A A season like this deserves a perfect ending. The return of these two English football superstars to the finals is well deserved. Instead we had another final this season and the result brought us another asterisk.
Three big finals; three red cards. Happily and fortunately, in overtime in the Champions League final, the underdog team has taken the initiative. Richie Arnold’s red card was slightly different to the other two in that, in theory at least, the player had a little time to weigh up his decision, but it didn’t make Toulouse particularly costly or make the scene exciting.
But the other two… Sam Kane’s red card in the first half of the World Cup final still reverberates like a hollowing out of the game’s ultimate display. Now, Beno Obanor has been handed another red card midway through the first half for an incident measured in inches and milliseconds, leaving us wondering whether, fairly or not, the right club won.
Northampton suffered almost as much damage as Bath. No one is complaining about a win for a team that has been doing so well this season. They were on top of their game from start to finish and we were delighted with their creativity. But a final is a final and it is important not only to preserve the integrity of the sport in order to maintain its credibility, but also to be a test of nerves for potential champions on the highest stage.
We don’t know how a direct battle between these two men will unfold. Of course, given how close the result was, it can’t be said that Bath would have won the game if they hadn’t played against 14 players for an hour. A red card changes the dynamic of a game, often with the underdog seemingly energized by it and the other team seemingly floundering.
The fact that we have to have this conversation does a disservice to the game. As far as the event itself is concerned, it is a classic of its kind. Obanor’s waist isn’t as high as a player’s body can be, but why target him? Upright tacklers are everywhere in rugby. But his waist was bent. Even more poignantly, as usual, ball-carrier Juano Augustus was clearly in trouble in the final seconds. Therefore, a legal tackle becomes illegal.
World Rugby held a seminar with the media this season where they pointed out, almost apologetically, how rare red cards are for illegal tackles, as if to say: “Guys, we know these red cards aren’t ideal, but, hey, Most games are unaffected.
One of the most distinguished referees of our time, Wayne Barnes (now retired), felt justified in questioning the wisdom of sending off players who, in the worst-case scenario, made ill-timed mistakes.
In modern times, it’s difficult to remember a red card for any intentional behavior. I’m reminded of a print from the 2017 match between England and Argentina. Still, Dylan Hartley lost his cool in a particular situation in 2013 and may or may not have called Barnes a “fucking liar,” but even so, there was sympathy for him .
But as in any sport, intentional criminal conduct intended to cause bodily or reputational harm is the ultimate sanction. They lose all meaning when they are often released because of what is essentially an accident, or at worst, a technical glitch. They just become an inevitable part of the sport.
Newsletter Promotion Post
Worse, they have no impact on the massive crisis facing the sport. The idea that waving a red card will magically eliminate head collisions is patently false, as it’s been more than seven years since the directive officially came into effect and the red cards keep popping up.
Even if they did eliminate them, imagining the game’s CTE crisis boils down to strange bangs to the head betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of dynamics. Instead, science continues to confirm the hypothesis that the repetition of multiple collisions of any kind, over many years and decades, is the critical input.
At the same seminar, World Rugby revealed that the typical number of head acceleration incidents in this year’s Six Nations – measured via mouthguards, the instrument they now use to monitor players for brain damage – was around 1,000 per game. . The final saw nearly 300 tackles and countless other collisions as players scrambled for the ball.
These are all areas that need to be focused on. Red cards have been accepted with sighs, but they don’t need to be. We should be talking about games and their integrity should be maintained at all costs. Only then can we ensure we get the final we deserve.
