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TALKING POINT: Shortage of common sense doesn’t help rugby

rugby04 November 2025 06:32
By:Gavin Rich
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Springboks © Gallo Images

With a Rugby World Cup set to be staged there in 2031, the showdown between Ireland and All Blacks in Chicago, billed as “The Rematch” because of what happened lost time the two teams met there, was an opportunity for rugby to sell itself to the United States market.

It was a high profile game and the billing focused on what happened the last time the two teams met in the city - Ireland’s historic first win over the then reigning World Cup champions.

If you looked beyond the obvious caveat that one team was battle hardened after the Rugby Championship and the other hadn’t played together since the Six Nations, it should have been a classic to whet the appetites of the American people for what is to come six years hence.

But what did rugby conspire to do? It did what is typical from those who run the sport - they appointed the most pedantic referee in the whole universe to take charge, an official who was happy to hold up play to adjust things if a penalty was taken a millimetre off the mark.

On a day when the sport should have been trying to sell itself as a fast paced game, a sport where things happen quicker than it does in the stop start American or grid-iron football the fans over there are used to, the first half lasted 52 minutes.

RIDICULOUS ONLY WORD TO DESCRIBE THAT RED CARD

Part of the reason for that was because there was another of those ridiculous red cards that have become such a blight on rugby and which, on this occasion, required a conference between the match officials that extended as long as a meeting of the US Senate might.

Ridiculous? Well, yes, it was ridiculous, because even the supposed victim of the action that saw Ireland’s Tadhg Beirne sent from the field appeared to see it as that. New Zealand flyhalf Beauden Barrett saw the incident for what it was - an understandable rugby incident that came about because of the misreading of a play and left the defending player with little option but to do what he did.

When Barrett ran to the short side of a ruck in Ireland’s 22, he received the scrumhalf’s pass so flat that Beirne had no time to drop his hips or warp his arms in the tackle.

In other words, it was an unavoidable collision, and much like the Stormers’ Neethling Fouche last year when he was pinged for a high tackle when he actually had a knee on the ground, there really wasn’t much the Irish player could do other than what he did.

“I spoke to Tadhg after the game and I was gutted for him, to be honest,” said Barrett to the media afterwards. “It’s one of those unfortunate parts of the game. I didn’t expect the ball. I was hoping that Cam would have played the other option out the back.

“He had no option and he didn’t intentionally put a shot on me. I can’t hide from the fact that I copped a shoulder to somewhere up there. That’s what happened. I will support him in terms of mitigating whatever happens next (at the Disciplinary Hearing) because I don’t feel there’s any intention there. It’s just unfortunate.”

REMOVE ‘INTENTION’ AND YOU REMOVE HALF THE CARDS

If you were to remove “intention” from any judgement on instances such as the one that blighted the game at Soldier Field many of the red cards that are shown by referees or, as was the case in this game, by the officials in the bunker, would not happen. Fouche wouldn’t have had to miss several Stormers games last season for a start.

And, seeing the Springboks are about to go into a seismic clash with France in Paris where there should be an overload of physicality and tension and the game could be decided by fine margins, the 2022 game between the sides in Marseille would not have been marred by the early red card shown to Bok flanker Pieter-Steph du Toit.

On the positive side for World Rugby, there has been an advance made since then. While the red card did end Beirne’s game in Chicago, Ireland were only down to 14 men for 20 minutes following the decision to change what pertained at the last World Cup, where All Black captain Sam Cane’s red card meant he was off for the rest of the game.

Ireland coped quite well with the red card and any suggestion that they lost the game because of it would be wide of the mark. They led for the period before it was restored to a 15 against 15 game. And knowing that it was only 20 minutes they’d be down to 14 probably helped Ireland’s management of that period.

IT’S A CONTACT SPORT SO APPLY COMMON SENSE

But a situation where two players effectively bump into each other in unavoidable fashion, and it happens so often, should not lead to a red card. As the then Bok captain Jean de Villiers pointed out to the referee when he was studying an incident on the big screen during a game between SA and the Wallabies in Brisbane in 2013, “remember that rugby is a contact sport”.

Dead right, and while safety does obviously have to be a concern, there should also be common sense applied. There was no common sense in Chicago last weekend, and frankly the very fact that there will be a World Cup played in that country may be another example of the sport lacking common sense.

Yes, there’s a potential new market there, but the appetite may have been underlined by the club coached by Heyneke Meyer and Pote Human going bankrupt. Money of course is what makes the world go round, so that obviously does play a role, just as doubtless it did in having three international games scheduled for London this past weekend.

Was it a surprise Wembley was only a fraction populated for the game between the Boks and Japan? For some it might have been but not for anyone with common sense. But unfortunately rugby, with its myriad of annual law changes that leaves even the experts confused and perplexed, as opposed to just nine basic laws in soccer, falls short when it comes to common sense.

Selling to a new market is going to be impossible if the game is not simplified. It's the common sense thing to do...

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