Good on England’s only World Cup-winning coach, Sir Clive Woodward, for calling the original decision, by a panel of three Australians appointed by Europe’s Six Nations, to clear Farrell “mind-boggling” and that it was “yet another example of rugby shooting itself in the foot”.
Preventing brain damage, and doing everything possible to keep dangerous high tackles out of the sport, is the responsibility of rugby officials. The call to not even smack Farrell on the back of his hand was a failure of care.
God knows there are enough players, from England hooker Steve Thompson, to All Black prop Carl Hayman, who have been voluble about their belief that head injuries in their playing days are responsible for the early onset dementia they’re now struggling with.
Being Northern Hemisphere rugby bureaucrats, Six Nations officials are usually about as open to full and frank public discussion on awkward issues as Putin’s Russia, so it’s taken several days for all the details of why the panel exonerated Farrell to be released.
Now they have been, we learn the three Aussies involved believed there was a “sudden and significant change in direction” by Basham that led to Farrell’s right shoulder, as Farrell himself conceded at the hearing, striking Basham’s head. That change in direction, they decided, was such a huge mitigating factor, Farrell didn’t deserve a red card.
Here’s the rub.
There have been efforts by rugby to improve player care. Some are behind the scenes, such as physical contact being limited at closed training sessions.
But for people to really believe rugby is concerned about its players, there needs to be public evidence of change, with test matches the perfect vehicle to illustrate improvements.
Sadly, Farrell’s exoneration was, as Woodward and others who succeeded at the highest levels in the game have made clear, genuinely shocking.
Former Welsh captain Sam Warburton, himself red-carded at the 2011 World Cup for what he says he now knows was definitely an illegal tackle, believes unequivocally Farrell should have been red-carded and banned. Farrell, he said, was one of the players he respected most in rugby. But the Basham high tackle? “There was no mitigation.”
Possibly the feeblest defence of Farrell being cleared came from France’s assistant coach, Welshman Sean Edwards, who claimed “these frame-by-frame [replay] pictures are so different to what players see on the pitch”.
Dead right. Except that the dratted slow-motion footage showed Farrell didn’t wrap his arms, and instead barged into Basham with his shoulder. Which is why Woodward, Warburton, and the vast majority of former coaches and players who have commentated are up in arms.
And, to return to why this whole business is so damaging to rugby, frame-by-frame replays are what people in the television audience see, and what they remember.
Whitewashing what happened at Twickenham would be as ludicrous as Prime Minister Rob Muldoon’s claims back in 1981 that a Springbok tour here was okay because his government was keeping politics out of sport. Just 13 months earlier the same government had piled on so much pressure for New Zealand to boycott the Olympics in Moscow, the Kiwi team was reduced from more than 100 competitors to just four people.
For rugby’s credibility, the Farrell decision must not just be re-examined. It must be overturned.
