John Roughan: Rugby should be judged on the field, not by committee

An injured Angus Ta'avao of the All Blacks consults medics, while referee Jaco Peyper talks to captain Sam Cane during the test match against Ireland on Saturday. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

Sport is full of lessons for life and no sport is better than rugby for providing lessons for the legislators and regulators of our lives. Rugby is a contest of mostly big, gym-built, protein-bulked bodies colliding at pace. Inevitably heads get knocked – a lot.

Padded headgear has always been available. The world's best lock, England's Maro Itoji, wears it but few others do. American football fans whose code requires hard helmets have long been amazed that rugby is played with bare heads.

In recent years a disproportionate number of former players have been found with permanent brain damage and some are using the fortune they've made from the game to sue it for compensation. Rugby's international legislators have responded with two edicts: one wise, the other foolish.

The wise rule is that a player who receives a troubling cranial impact is immediately sent from the field for a concussion test and if he fails it he doesn't return, possibly for weeks, until he gets a medical clearance.

The foolish rule is that head contact must always result in punishment for the player who was not carrying the ball, regardless of whether the contact was clearly accidental – inevitable even – at the pace the game is played.

That injustice is amplified by the fact that incidents are not adjudicated at the pace of the game. They are reviewed on a screen in slow motion, over and over, until acts that happened in real time faster than a human can think, let alone avoid, appear avoidable and even deliberate.

Last Saturday night, in the second test against Ireland, an All Black jumped to block a kick and touched the head of the kicker as he came down. He received the lesser of the prescribed penalties, a yellow card, meaning 10 minutes off the field.

Later two players banged heads when the ball carrier suddenly swerved into the defender, leaving both on the ground and blood streaming from the defender's brow. While the wound was being bandaged, the poor fellow looked up to see the referee showing him a red card, meaning his team would be one short for the rest of the game.

The fact the defenders were All Blacks in both incidents tells you why Ireland deserved to win the game. No sour grapes here. But I hope anyone who writes laws and regulations of any kind was watching.

Andrew Porter of Ireland, bleeds from a head injury while playing New Zealand in the second test match. Photo / AP

First lesson: be fair, accidents happen. Second: be realistic, judge things in real time. The third lesson is seldom as obvious as it is in rugby: an individual can make better decisions than a committee.

When minor head contacts occur, play is seldom stopped by the referee, it is stopped by a message in his earpiece from an assistant on the sidelines or the unseen "TMO" (television match official). They all then confer as they watch the replays in slo-mo and, as often happens in committees, you can hear good sense give way to the letter of the law.

Rugby is grossly over-regulated. It has more rules than anyone can remember, including officials. Last Saturday's match descended to high farce when nobody knew the red card replacement rule precisely.

Referees generally do a fine job when they are left alone and allowed to use their discretion. New Zealand, Australian and South African referees these days make the flow of the game their first consideration. Northern referees not so much. They reflect a different culture.

If you sit in an English crowd you'll hear people constantly spotting minor infringements. They are Anglo-Saxons, they have a Germanic attitude to law. We're more Celtic in the colonies, we don't mind rules being sidelined sometimes for a higher purpose, like a good game of rugby.

Unfortunately rugby's laws are made in the north. All Black captain Sam Cane remonstrated with the referee, South African Jaco Peyper, after one of last Saturday night's cards and, over TV, Peyper was heard to say he had "directions".

All four British unions are touring southern countries at present. All four lost their first tests two weeks ago and all four won last weekend. It doesn't look like coincidence.

Tonight's third tests will be telling. Australian Eddie Jones, coach of England, spoke out after their match with the Wallabies had players sent off for accidental knock-ons while trying to intercept passes. Excessive penalties are rife.

Excessive penalties for plainly innocent head contacts are obviously meant to be a deterrent, but that presupposes it is possible to avoid the head of someone charging, head down, cradling the ball, who swerves and smacks into you before you have time to think.

In time, rugby will come to its senses. It could even happen tonight.