Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu call ‘set the tone’ as Nigel Owens believes officials got two calls wrong
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Tommy O'Brien's tackles during Ireland v South Africa.
Former referee Nigel Owens has dissected the two dangerous tackles during the match between Ireland and South Africa that did not result in yellow cards.
Springboks fly-half Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Irish winger Tommy O’Brien both made high tackles during the match in Dublin, and while both backs were penalised, referee Matthew Carley and his officiating team deemed neither incident to warrant a card sanction.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu‘s incident occurred first with the playmaker attempting to make a cover tackle on O’Brien in the opening minutes of the match.
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s hit
The Irish winger was sprinting down the touchline before being grabbed by Bok flanker Pieter-Steph du Toit, who made the initial tackle. Feinberg-Mngomezulu then thundered into O’Brien, making contact with his head.
The tackle was reviewed on-field, but Carley deemed that it did not reach the yellow card threshold, a decision that Owens disagreed with and said that it set the tone for the counter.
“There’s a lot going on in this game, and to be fair to the referee, he got most of them correct,” the former referee stated on World Rugby’s Whistle Watch show.
“A couple we’ll discuss, but he got most of them correct, in my opinion.
“I wonder if this one set the tone for the rest of the game because I was expecting, and if I was on the field – I’m not saying that I would be any better than anybody else – but I would have given a yellow card for that because he certainly goes in with no attempt to wrap with the shoulder. And you tend to see that these types of actions now do tend to be given as yellow cards.
“So, in this instant, that should have been a yellow card.”
Turning his attentions to O’Brien’s tackle on Canan Moodie later on in the half, Owens again believes that it also warranted a yellow card despite the fact that the Irish winger came off second best.
Tommy O’Brien’s tackle
The 27-year-old was forced off the pitch after making head-on-head contact with the Springboks’ centre, an action that Carley also deemed to have been a penalty and no more.
Commenting on the decision, Owens said: “What the officials felt here is that there was a drop in height, and the tackle of O’Brien was passive, which means he’s absorbing the ball carrier rather than going into him. But I’m not seeing a significant drop in height.
“He is slightly bent at the knees, slightly. So is the ball carrier, but they’re still quite upright, and you do then have the shoulder contact with the head, although most of the force is through the body, but then you still have a shoulder contact with the head.
“The strange thing here is that the guy who should be penalised is the one who actually goes off for the HIA and not the actual ball carrier.”
The verdict
Owens was joined on the show by former Wales and Lions centre Jamie Roberts who asked: “So does that come into your mind? If it’s a passive collision and this guy gets hurt versus a big hit, the ball carrier gets hurt.
“Are you kind of thinking right degrees of danger a bit less here, because you know the tackler is absorbing the hit?”
“If you are absorbing the hit, then that degree of danger would be much lower,” Owens replied.
“Even though there may be force coming from the up-ball carrier, the ball carrier is not doing anything illegal. But if there’s a lot of force coming from him and you are still upright, even though you’re absorbing it, you are still at fault because you haven’t made the effort to get lower.
“And because there is still contact with the shoulder to the head, you probably would expect this to be a yellow card.”
This led the former official to issue a plea to coaches and players to take the decision away from the referees by changing their behaviour and practising safer tackle techniques.
“But at the end of the day, players and coaches get lower, avoid the shoulder, leading with the shoulder,” he remarked.
“Get your tackles lower. You take everything out of the official’s hands then. But we’re still not seeing that change in behaviour. So something needs to change.
“There needs to be a stronger message. But in this instance here, you would expect that to be a yellow card.”
