Ask Lipman if red cards are necessary safeguards

Last weekend’s Bledisloe 4 match between the Wallabies and All Blacks was a cracker, and featured two red cards, one for each side.

- COLIN BOAG

It also highlighted the hypocrisy that still exists when it comes to dangerous tackles. We either want to eliminate the bad tackles from the game or we don’t, and if it’s the latter then eventually it will lead to rugby dying out.

That will happen because parents won’t allow their kids to play the game for fear of them being seriously injured, or at the professional level as a result of seriously injured players being awarded huge personal injury damages: players are bigger, the contacts are more ferocious, so the game needs to be made safer. That’s why it was so dispiriting to hear former players and pundits complaining about the two red cards that were awarded.

At the heart of the issue is the argument that in some way players being sent off is a bad thing because it spoils the spectacle. Former New Zealand great, Sir John Kirwan, said he doesn’t think there should be red cards in rugby, just yellow cards and a report system, a view that was shared by another ex-All Black Christian Cullen, who said that, “It just ruins the game”! For me that’s total nonsense and is another example of the view held by some, predominantly but not exclusively from the southern hemisphere, that rugby is entertainment, and no longer sport.