Marc Peard chats with Sam Hewat about the opening weekend of Super Rugby, and we catch up with Archer Liz Randle.
Anyone who reckons, on the basis of the first weekend of Super Rugby and the proliferation of yellow cards for high tackles, that rugby has gone soft, needs to check their hard wiring is plugged in as it should be.
Rarely has Super Rugby opened to such a brainless and misguided chorus of criticism based on an utter fallacy that players should accept that their heads are inevitable collateral damage in the modern game.
There are some, who it would seem, will never understand the difference between being supremely physical and being wild and reckless.
The game can have boundaries and sanctions that don't dilute or eliminate its core offering and not every refereeing directive needs to automatically be viewed as the game's administrators pandering to soccer mums.
Rugby may have the most unfathomable complex and ambiguous rules which rely on interpretation, but when it comes to high tackling, there really is no confusion.
The law and how it will be interpreted is crystal clear - if the tackler makes contact with the head, deliberate or otherwise, there will be consequences.
It has to be that way because just week Hurricanes prop Reggie Goodes announced his premature retirement due to concussion.
He became the second Hurricanes player in two years to be forced to retire as James Broadhurst suffered the same fate for the same reasons last year, while Ben Afeaki is only in the Blues coaching box this year because he too was forced to retire in his 20s following a massive head clash while playing for the Chiefs.
That's why there is a zero-tolerance approach to tackles which collect the head. It is not selective or conditional and it's not a secret either.
Ryan Crotty of the Crusaders is tackled by Lachlan Boshier of the Chiefs during the round two Super Rugby match between the Crusaders and the Chiefs. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
World Rugby has been on a mission to eradicate high tackling and force a lowering of the contact point in all collisions since 2016 and every Super Rugby player took the field last weekend knowing the hardline stance referees would take.
This isn't an ill-conceived fad either, patience for which will suddenly wane and see a reversion to the bad old days where head shots were often free from sanction on the basis they were part of the entertainment package.
And nor is it the case that the rules change when a player is diving for the tryline as Ryan Crotty was when he was taken round the neck by Chiefs flanker Lachlan Boshier.
There is no justification for high tackles: it doesn't matter the body height of the ball carrier and it's just nonsense to say Boshier had no choice or other option but to hit Crotty high in trying to defend his line.
The other option was to not tackle Crotty around the head. It was the same when Michael Al'aalatoa hit Damian McKenzie earlier in the game.
No one should have any sympathy for the Crusaders prop that he, at 1.9m and 135kg, found himself having to tackle the 1.76m, 82kg McKenzie who buzzes about like a house fly.
Jordan Taufua of the Crusaders scores a try during the Crusaders V Chiefs. Photo www.photosport.co.nz
The beauty of rugby is that it is a game for all shapes and sizes and big men have to get lower to make legal tackles on smaller men.
It is criminal to have a cultural of excuses that says it is hard for the big men and therefore there should be leniency when they clock someone half their size, weight and power around the chops.
And so, the question for those who still believe the Chiefs were hard done by in Christchurch when they conceded a penalty and lost Boshier to a yellow cars, is this: how would they feel if, in nine months, Crotty makes the same dart down the short side at Twickenham to score what would be a match-winning try and is taken round the neck by England's Chris Robshaw?
What would everyone expect the outcome to be in that scenario and would there still be a case to mount that rugby has gone soft and referees have lost the plot if the All Blacks are awarded the penalty try and England see their man sin-binned?
