Gregor Paul: How All Blacks incident against Wales exposed the greatest weakness in rugby's laws

OPINION:

Maybe in the current climate the All Blacks should be grateful to have left Cardiff without anyone having been shown a red card.

These days, walking off a test ground victorious and having incurred just the one yellow card as the All Blacks did against Wales, is about as good as it gets.

And that yellow card to Nepo Laulala could easily enough, in this era of jittery officiating, have been a red.

It fit the bill certainly for a red – as Laulala made direct contact with Ross Moriarity's head and the impact was enough to see the Welsh flanker leave the field and not return.

Nor did Laulala obviously wrap his arms around the ball carrier and if referee Mathieu Raynal hadn't been convinced there were mitigating factors, the All Blacks prop would have been off and not coming back 10 minutes later.

Ethan Blackadder could also have been shown a yellow for his part in the same tackle for which Laulala was punished – possibly even a red as it's possible to argue that he too first made contact with Moriarity's head and didn't wrap his arms either.

Beauden Barrett also escaped time in the bin for a failed, attempted intercept and one yellow card, then, seems like a fair cop when presented with the alternatives of how bad things could have been.

But just as the All Blacks have every reason to be grateful to have been administered such a light dose of disciplinary medicine, so too could they, if they were inclined, find the fuel to muster a sense of indignation that they had to swallow any at all.

Of the three players that were involved in the collision that drew the card, one was unquestionably reckless – and that was Moriarity; Blackadder was perhaps a touch careless and Laulala was plain unlucky.

Ross Moriarty of Wales is injured during a tackle by Ethan Blackadder and Nepo Laulala of the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport

Yet in the eyes of the law, Moriarity was the victim, Blackadder the aider and abetter and Laulala the perpetrator.

It was yet another example that the current laws around contact to the head, while admirable, are fraught with difficulty when it comes to the near impossible business of applying them in a manner that genuinely reflects the nature of the incident in question.

The single greatest weakness of the new set-up is the lack of scope to make empathetic decisions that acknowledge in a collision sport, there will be accidental or unintentional impacts.

But what the Laulala incident also highlighted is that the law-makers have to broaden their perspective in terms of accountability.

Since the introduction of tougher laws three years ago, the onus to clean things up has sat exclusively with the tackler.

World Rugby has rightly been on a mission through a process of disciplinary action and education, to drop the body heights of tacklers around the world.

They have adopted a zero-tolerance stance on upright tackling, those nasty collisions where the defender's knees are never bent, their head never lower than the ball carrier's shoulders and the initial contact is obviously dangerous as the result of either poor technique or recklessness.

Tackling is the main source of rugby's concussions and tacklers are the most likely to suffer - accounting as they do for the majority of brain injuries.

But the same onus needs to be placed on the ball carrier to not lead with their head the way Moriarity did. He charged into contact and then ducked, almost weaponising his head as he did so.

Referee Mathieu Raynal shows a yellow card to Nepo Laulala (not pictured). Photo / Photosport

Blackadder, as can be seen from every angle, was about as low as it was humanly possible for him to be as he made his tackle.

Laulala, too, was adopting a pre-tackle position that coaches around the world would be happy to recommend to young players. Technically the two All Blacks players were in sound, technically approved positions and yet they both clunked Moriarity on the head.

And that's because the Welshman's technique was horrible and he increased the prospect of him being struck on the head when he went into contact not looking at the tacklers or using any other legal body part to shield himself.

No one should be encouraged or allowed to fly into contact with the near scientific certainty that the only body part they are offering up to be hit is their head.

Which is why the time has come for the law to be amended and for referees to be asked to determine the role of the ball carrier in any head contact and have the power to discipline them.

There's no suggestion Moriarty was guilty of anything other than poor technique, but if leading with the head isn't stamped out, it will become a more widely adopted cynical tactic where ball carriers are willing to sacrifice their personal well-being to induce a yellow or ideally a red card.