Loose Pass ‘at a loss’ over ‘baffling’ weekend of officiating inconsistencies and its five wishes for 2025

Planet Rugby 31 Dec 2024 11:59 AM

Sharks centre Andre Esterhuizen and Saracens back-row Toby Knight.

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with head shots, arm tucks and a couple of new year wishes…

Confused?

If ever there was a weekend of confusion around the world as to what constitutes a good cleanout, what doesn’t, what’s legal, what’s not, what’s cardable, what’s not and which colour if so, this was it.

From Bath to Clermont to Cape Town any normal rugby viewer would have been baffled, perplexed and – certainly in Clermont – bored with the fuzzy explanations, omissions of detail and the interminable breaks in play while TMOs, match officials and video operators did their thing. Outcomes varied. HIAs were forgotten. Players who should have played on were sent off. Players who shouldn’t have played on, if the precedents set by the other sendings-off were to be followed, did so with impunity. Players who ought to have been checked for concussion were not.

The United Rugby Championship game between the Stormers and Sharks in Cape Town took over two hours to complete, which puts the amount of dead time at around 20 minutes, an impressive stat for an 80-minute game with a running clock. While the game itself was generally pretty poor, it was not helped by ongoing appeals from players to check all manner of minutiae, nor the length of time it took to check them.

In Clermont, both Montpellier’s Lenni Nouchi and Etienne Fourcade were incredibly lucky to get away with driving into rucks and mauls and having their driving shoulders making contact with opponents’ heads; Nouchi’s contact saw Rob Simmons exit the game. In both cases the referee indicated the contact was made with a closed shoulder/no arms. Both were penalised. In neither case was a card issued. Fourcade, whose bullock into the ruck was borne of frustration after the referee had already signalled advantage, was especially lucky.

Poor Toby Knight of Saracens got the other end of it all. At his point of contact with Ollie Lawrence he was standing still and stooped. Relative to the Bath players upright around him his shoulder was at around about solar plexus height. Lawrence was the one carrying all the forward momentum; even despite the fact that Lawrence’s head collided with Knight’s shoulder, the force of the contact still drove Knight back a metre. But Knight gets a red card, Lawrence doesn’t even get a HIA.

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Most pertinently here, not two minutes later Ted Hill tore into the Saracens line at pace. It takes a brave fella to get down and tackle that, but Alex Lozowski did so, in no dissimilar position to Knight, but unfortunately for him this time the onrushing Hill’s shoulder thundered into Lozowski’s noggin. Again, both players stooped before the contact to around solar plexus height (Lozowski and Hill both looked a mite higher than Knight and Lawrence actually), but this time the ball carrier hits the head of the tackler. So of course, no penalty or card. Lozowski is left instead to find his scattered wits around the Rec turf while Thomas du Toit capitalises on the yardage gain and scores. And Lozowski? A bit of magic sponge and on he goes, despite his clearly being knocked senseless for a moment, even if not out completely.

Jean-Luc du Plessis was not only lucky not to see a card for his charge in Cape Town, but also because Andre Esterhuizen’s head and body, which was over the player on the ground, had been shifted over to the left. Had it not been, Du Plessis would have driven right onto his bonce.

But what are we supposed to make of it all? There’s an aspect of technique to some of it which we’ll come to in a moment, but how are we supposed to understand any of it? In Bath, identical contact situations are evaluated completely differently, ostensibly because of whether the ball-carrier’s head gets whacked or the tackler’s. In France you have two clear drives onto a head unpunished (give him his dues, the referee was at least consistent within his own game). In South Africa, a ruck clearout is compared to an airplane landing before being penalised. All at a cost of about 13 minutes of our viewing time across those incidents.

Discuss. We’re at a loss.

Tuck and bind

One aspect that the clearouts referred to above had in common was a technique which, having watched Jordie Barrett get away with one last week, appears now to be everywhere, but needs close attention from the lawmakers.

It’s that technique whereby the outside arm looks for a bind but the inside arm is tucked and the shoulder closed at the point of contact. Both clearouts in Clermont used it, with the head contact initiated by the tucked arm/closed shoulder both times. The same applies to Du Plessis’ hit on Esterhuizen.

If we’re going to continue the glacial move towards clarity, this is a technique that is increasing the danger at ruck time and needs to be removed.