Loose Pass: Ox Nche was more deserving of a yellow card than Olly Woodburn

Lawrence Nolan
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Loose Pass

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with over-zealous officiating, over-zealous gamesmanship and over-zealous celebrations…

To the letter

Classic quote of modern-day rugby: “Well, we seem just to be finding new ways of ruining the game don’t we?”

That was Rob Baxter of Exeter after wing Olly Woodburn had received his second yellow card during the 62-19 walloping by Leicester. Despite it being only 22-12 at the time, it was a game that was clearly escaping Exeter’s tenacious attempts to stay within distance. This was not a game-turner as such, but it did extinguish any chance the game had of remaining a contest. Loose Pass switched off once Chris Ashton had his century; as Mr. Baxter had mentioned, the contest was ruined.

It should be pointed out that Karl Dickson had sounded warning shots. There had already been textbook yellow cards for one-handed ‘interception attempts’, neither of which looked even remotely like succeeding. He had also penalised Stuart Hogg earlier in the game for diving on someone on the floor as his opponent chased back and fell on a ball in textbook fashion. He had been clear: “you can’t dive on a man on the floor,” were his exact words. He was clearly blowing a strict game throughout and it ought to be acknowledged that it was one of the better refereeing performances Loose Pass has seen this season.

And even Mr. Baxter was man enough to acknowledge: “If you listen to the officials talking… you can see how they’ve come to a yellow card.”

And yes, you can see how they have come to it in terms of the law, but goodness knows how they’ve seen it as what they’ve seen it as. Diving onto the man on the floor? Woodburn slides in, with quite significant portions of his body hitting the turf before coming anywhere near Ashton. Both of his arms wrap around Ashton, using the front arm in a game but ultimately vain attempt to get under the ball and stop it being touched down. Ashton’s boot which slides into touch is firmly trapped under the body of Hogg, Woodburn is nowhere near it.

Loose Pass has touched before on the occasional unnecessary dive onto a try-scorer by a defender which has no chance of making even a jot of difference to the scoring act, and we’ve also looked at many a moment when scorers in the corner are pushed into touch rather than tackled correctly. A crackdown on diving late onto scorers is welcome.

But Woodburn’s act struck Loose Pass as similar to that which defenders make at almost every single maul driven over the line: a last-gasp attempt to get something under the ball. Moreover, he makes a good effort, in our view, to specifically not dive onto Ashton, he does not make head contact, he does not shoulder-barge or charge.

So was this the right call? Loose Pass does not think so. As a try-scoring act, it should get the benefit of good TMO consideration and official review, which should take all the factors into account. The fault as it came across, was Mr. Dickson’s evident enthusiasm to focus only on his initial perception and to actively seek out ways to penalise Woodburn rather than looking at the situation in its entirety. The referee saw a defender diving onto a would-be scorer, but we reckon Woodburn made a technically astute attempt to get under the ball and prevent a try.

But then that’s the letter-of-the-law culture in which rugby currently resides. In terms of care and safety to the players, it has to – witness incidents such as Duncan Taylor’s red card on Saturday. It wasn’t ugly, nor intentional, nor cynical but it was careless and deserved discipline. Woodburn’s act was none of these however, while it is very much a point of interpretation as to whether it was even illegal. Either way, it killed off the game far, far earlier than would otherwise have been the case, not what rugby needs.

No, really, to the letter

Far more appropriate would have been a yellow card for Ox Nche, had Ben Whitehouse decided to issue one.

The clip of Whitehouse dismissing Nche 10 metres for ‘trying to buy a penalty from the TMO’ has gone as viral as can be, with one column terming it as Whitehouse ‘single-handedly starting the resistance against players feigning injuries’ and calling Friday ‘a day that will go down in rugby history’.

Right. Well, anyway, it was perfectly correct of Mr. Whitehouse to penalise the Bok prop for doing what he did, but a thought: it happens so rarely. And will referees always be so hard on it as to penalise?

If a player is doing that – Nche patently was not injured – this surely is categorised as exactly the sort of unsportsmanlike behaviour that goes against the fundamentals of the game. In Loose Pass’ view, far more cardworthy than Woodburn’s attempt to stop a try being scored.

Taking it too far

There is no denying the extent of Ashton’s achievements. The first centurion, in try-scoring terms, in Premiership history – and that despite arriving late-ish to the party from rugby league and spending time in France. His hat-trick on Sunday epitomised his inexhaustible appetite for support work, which has been his greatest asset. Our congratulations to him.

Loose Pass has also noted that the ‘Ash Splash’ appears to have been largely consigned to the history books, but we’d rather have seen that than the self-promoting leap into the stands and applause of himself?

Anyway, he was not the worst celebrator on show: when Hogg scored Exeter’s second, both Will Beaconsall and Jack Yeandle rolled Hogg over on the floor and… well, Loose Pass has performed similar manoeuvres on occasion and has two daughters to show for it.

Exuberance when scoring is not a crime, but surely we’ve better ways of showing it? That kind of thing’s for the other game.

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