‘Head butt’ red card makes mockery of rules

The Brumbies could’ve been derailed by a ludicrous red card decision. Instead they fought on and won.

Folau Fainga'a’s “head butt” on Bulls forward Matthys Basson

Where is it all going to end, Brad Thorn asked on Saturday night, when questioned about the latest move by World Rugby to ensure no player is tackled about the head.

A few hours later, in Pretoria, we had our answer when South African referee Marius van der Westhuizen sent off Brumbies hooker Folau Fainga’a for a headbutt.

When I say “headbutt”, I am not using the words as Tony Shaw or John Connolly or Steve Finnane or any of the other hard men who used to populate the game would ever understand them. Fainga’a stood — and I am deliberately being conservative here — three finger-widths away from Bulls replacement forward Matthys Basson’s face and then inclined his head forward so as to make contact with the South African’s nose. Basson did not recoil in any way, showed no expression whatever beyond maintaining his gunfighter glare and that should have been the end of that.

But, of course, it wasn’t.

The television match official — Willie Vos of South Africa — had observed contact with the head: Fainga’a’s forehead resting on Basson’s nose. That was all it took to set in train the dreadful, unstoppable machinery that is the SANZAAR process for dealing with foul play. Did Fainga’a make contact with the head? Clearly he did, though there was no discussion about how much force was used — because there was none. But that was all it took. Van der Westhuizen reached into his pocket, completely bypassed the yellow card and went immediately to red.

It was the 61st minute, the Brumbies were a point behind and for the second week running a red card could have scuttled them. Instead, to their immense credit, they came from behind to win 38-28.

Was Fainga’a stupid? Yes. But was he guilty of foul play? By any sensible definition, he clearly was not and the SANZAAR judiciary — whose credibility has pretty much been shredded this year — faces a test of whether it is still maintains any contact with reality.

Fainga’a’s crime was no more than a bit of macho posturing and while everyone applauds efforts to stamp head-high tackles out of the game, surely there are limits. His laughable send-off followed closely on the heels of World Rugby’s announcement of the “nipple line” law. Any tackle that finishes above the line of the nipples is now a penalisable — and quite possibly a dismissible — offence. It was this rule change that Thorn had been queried about.

“Soon it will be the belly button,” said the Queensland Reds coach and former All Black hard man. “Where’s it going to go, where’s it going to end? For me, I’m just pleased I’m retired. I was pretty rough around the edges. There’s a lot of rules. It’s getting pretty strict around physicality, you know.”

While we are on the subject of aggravating officialdom, might I raise the topic of bonus points. I would submit as evidence for the prosecution the Waratahs-Chiefs game on Saturday in Hamilton. In the end — and I mean literally right at the end of the match — the Chiefs scored a try through Damian McKenzie that pushed them out to 6-3 on the try-count. Now, putting to one side a curious ruling by NZ referee Glen Jackson where he disallowed a Tahs try by ruling a forward pass from Kurtley Beale to Will Miller, when the five-metre line provided a clear guide that it wasn’t and ignoring the fact that he didn’t give Nathan Harris a yellow card when the Chiefs hooker proceeded to “roll away” from a breakdown right on his own tryline in typical NZ fashion — by making as big an obstacle of himself as he could — McKenzie’s try had two effects.

By giving the Chiefs a three-try advantage over the Waratahs, it pushed them out to a bonus point win, while at the same snatching a consolation bonus point away from NSW. When the score had been 32-27, the Tahs were within the seven-point margin; not so when the score blew out to 39-27.

All this falls into the “mildly annoying” category. Bonus points turn into a major aggravation when they determine places on the ladder. There have been too many incidents in the past when bonus points have pushed a team above sides that have scored more wins than them.

Indeed, it’s shaping up that way right now. The Lions presently have won only seven games but have scraped together eight bonus points to give them a total of 36 points. Their main rivals for the title of South African conference champions, the Jaguares, have eight wins but, with only two bonus points to their credit are only on 34 points. Yet surely it’s ludicrous when a team with seven wins is ranked ahead of a team with eight.

Super Rugby teams don’t compete for bonus points. They compete for “Ws” and any bonus point are incidental. The Highlanders provide a classic example of that. They had the Reds beaten 18-15 on Saturday night when, in the last seconds of the match, they were given a penalty. They could perhaps have taken a kick to the corner and possibly denied Queensland a point, but that would have exposed them to the possibility of the Reds stealing the ball and maybe racing away for the winning try. So they hoofed the ball out and took the win.

My devilishly cunning proposal is to still keep bonus points, both for wins of three tries or more, and for losses of less than seven. They still serve a useful purpose where the quality of the football is concerned.

But they would only be used in the event or two or more sides finishing equal on wins. In that event, bonus points could be used to determine their position on the table. Otherwise, however, positions will be determined by wins alone. Bonus points wouldn’t come into it.

Or is that too sensible?