Loose Pass: A warning over controversial British and Irish Lions proposal while 20-minute red card set for another global ‘power struggle’
British and Irish Lions captain Maro Itoje and an inset of Referee Matthew Carley showing a red card.
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the 20-minute red card, free-roaming Lions and America’s weekend of fun…
The real north v south battle
As we head towards another set of meaningless July Tests played by knackered European te- sorry, as we head towards the Nations’ Cup, ostensibly with north v south pride on the line, a different north v south battle continues to simmer away.
The lines in this one are not quite as clearly drawn as the equator, but France’s vociferous determination to not have anything to do with the 20-minute red card in its current guise will conjure up an interesting little sideline power struggle heading towards the next World Cup.
The French – and indeed, the rest of the Six Nations, who are believed to broadly be in agreement – think that the 20-minute red is a bit of a cop out, in that it does not punish the teams so harshly for an individual player’s transgression and thus leaves those transgressions a little more likely and a little less attended to by players.
Furthermore, and supposedly backed up by evidence, they also do not think that a permanent red card is such a serious disadvantage to the one team; the main reason it was conjured up as a concept and trialled in Super Rugby in the first place.
But it is the other reason that is the one that keeps getting caught in the middle: the one about players, especially tacklers, getting themselves caught in a slightly wrong position in a fast-moving and dynamic game and instigating head contact with an opponent. Permanent red cards are far too harsh in a majority of cases, but with the focus on eliminating head contact and on eradicating carelessness in technique, yellow cards are deemed too soft. How can a deliberate knock-on bring the same sanction as a dangerous ruck clean-out?
There are arguments still on both sides. Certainly the one aspect the French (and a couple of others) insisted upon, namely that a full red card can still be given for particularly egregious acts, has been proven a good solution. But the 20-minute red card has felt messy, and at times inconsistent, although that has improved immeasurably.
Is there a clean solution? It would appear not, certainly not while the sensitivity over head contact remains. France’s orange card suggestion and shifting of the onus onto referees would only serve to muddy the waters further.
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But there is little doubt that officials have become significantly better over the past two years at recognising which occurrences are accidental and which are a result of crass carelessness, and that a return to the simple yellow and red card system would not open the doors to as much controversy at there used to be.
So Loose Pass’ view is that we could give the former yellow and red system one more go and allow the officials to show us how much better they have become. It would certainly be simpler.
Wallabies great: ‘I will only go to France if I can avoid prison’
Lions tours become a sought-after commodity
The announced boost to Australia’s and Australian rugby’s coffers from the 2025 Lions tour were eye-opening. The union more than doubled its revenue from 2024 in 2025 to A$ 262m, allowing the board members of Rugby Australia, who have two World Cups coming up in the next three years, to talk proudly of a financial reset.
Ears pricked up everywhere, to the extent that the traditional Australia, New Zealand, South Africa rhythm of quadrennial Lions tours is now under threat. France has become a new touring destination, while Argentina remains the choice of many neutrals seeking a truly new pasture.
Both destinations have merits. South American rugby is clearly on the up, and a Lions itinerary featuring a Test series against Argentina, with Chile, Uruguay and Brazil on the circuit as well as three or four clashes with some select teams from, say, Tucuman, Mendoza and Rosario, is the stuff of serious dreams. And while France would be epic, watching the Lions take on Toulouse and Bordeaux et al might have too much of a feel of it being a series of European Champions Cup all-star games.
But the pushback from the ‘haves’ has already begun. SA Rugby CEO Rian Oberholzer called the potential loss of revenue to the famous three ‘tragic’, while there is certainly a whiff among these rumours of the Lions spotting an opportunity to make a nice fat buck at the expense of the spirit of the tours.
There is no harm in taking the Lions somewhere new, but it should still feel like a tour to somewhere challenging and exciting, rather than a glamorous roadshow, available only to the highest bidder.
Sevens heaven
Major League Rugby may still be struggling to find its foothold, but there is little doubt about American Universities’ burgeoning appetite for rugby. The Collegiate Rugby Championship sevens took place in Boyds, Maryland this weekend past, with colleges from far and wide and of all shapes and hues gathering together for a belting three-day extravaganza.
144 teams from 80 colleges – that’s over 1700 players – across four levels convened for the tournament, a significant number of young, up-and-coming players.
Not all of them were brilliant. The number of conversions missed in front of the posts was staggering, even more so the number of restarts that failed to go ten metres. There were some remarkably odd in-game decisions too, not least the poor girl who panicked under pressure and reached over from the in-goal area to touch the ball down on the in-play side of the tryline and then got clattered for her non-scoring move. And there was the team that saw two players sin-binned for pulling the same opponent’s hair within two minutes of each other.
But it was fun, it was also often extremely good quality, and it was a quiet sign that the USA might just get this rugby thing going yet.