Wallabies skills coach Mick Byrne calls for change to red card rules

Wallabies skills coach Mick Byrne wants to see a change in rules over a red card to protect the game as a spectacle.

Reds captain Scott Higginbotham is shown a red card during the match against the Rebels at AAMI Park last Friday. Picture: AAP

It probably comes from his days in the AFL, but Wallabies skills coach Mick Byrne struggles to understand why rugby can’t adopt a red-card policy in which the offending player is banned for the rest of the match but is still ­replaced after 10 minutes to allow the game to continue with 15 on 15.

The opening Super Rugby match of the Australian conference was barely nine minutes old when Queensland Reds captain Scott Higginbotham was sent off for a high shoulder charge on Melbourne Rebels lock Matt Philip, for which Higginbotham was subsequently suspended for three matches. The red card effectively ended the game as a contest.

If Byrne’s idea was implemented, it still would be the same process for the player sent off. From the moment he was shown the red card, he would take no further part in the match and would have to face the judiciary.

But from a fan’s perspective, the game would continue as a genuine contest, although the ­offending side would be forced to use up one of their tactical substitutions. In the event of an early departure like Higginbotham’s, that would also involve a penalty of sorts.

“I grew up playing rugby union and rugby league as a kid but then I played AFL professionally,” Byrne said. “All incidents are put on report. There is no red or yellow card. If an incident is deemed to be a red card, then the player is off for the game but his team shouldn’t be penalised for that. They should be able to replace that player. I like the idea of continuing with 15 on 15.”

Byrne’s proposal, or any of the host of ideas around adopting an NRL-style system of putting players on report for offences, have no chance of being introduced by World Rugby until after next year’s World Cup.

A SANZAAR spokesman yesterday said the organisation could not make law amendments of its own accord.

By the standard definition of disciplined behaviour, Byrne said the Reds were the third-most disciplined team on the opening weekend of competition for the Australian and NZ conferences, giving away only eight penalties, one more than the Brumbies and the Highlanders.

“If you give away less than 10 penalties per match, that’s regarded as a good result,” he said.

Yet Queensland fans will look at that in bewilderment. Once they lost their captain to a red card in the ninth minute, and then lock Lukhan Tui to a yellow card 22 minutes in, the standard definition of undisciplined behaviour would appear to have gone out the window.

The first round of competition always yields some interesting refereeing interpretations. It has to be said that there were some inconsistent calls, at best.

Chiefs replacement backrower Lachlan Boshier earned himself a yellow card and had a penalty try awarded against his side when he dived at Crusaders centre Ryan Crotty and bundled him into touch with a tackle that admittedly was above the shoulders. Yet it all happened half a metre off the ground as Crotty lunged for the corner. How else was Boshier supposed to tackle him?

Yet in the same match, referee Ben O’Keeffe initially only penalised Crusaders prop Michael Alaalatoa for a swinging arm head-high tackle on Chiefs playmaker Damian McKenzie. It was only after the TMO intervened that he decided to pull out the yellow card. O’Keeffe’s initial rationale for giving a penalty only was that McKenzie had ducked, which was the same excuse Higginbotham had given to referee Brendon Pickerill.

Inconsistencies were also apparent in how referees interpreted the deliberate knock-on rule which, sadly, will take the intercept out of the game if it continues down the present path.

At present, a player who ­attempts an intercept but fails to catch the ball runs the gauntlet of anything from a knock-on ruling, to a penalty, to a yellow card, depending on how his actions were interpreted by the referee.

“I can understand referees penalising or even yellow carding one-handed attempts at intercepts, but where a player gets two hands to the ball — as Stormers captain Siya Kolisi did against the Waratahs — it should be just part of the game,” said Byrne.

What would have happened, for instance, had Rebels fullback Dane Haylett-Petty knocked on the pass he intercepted from the Reds’ Duncan Paia’aua to score last Friday? It seems ludicrous he have could be sent to the sin bin for attempting an audacious play.

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