This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with sour grapes, more head contact folly, the curious start to the Premiership Final and the curious end to the match access in France…
Going out on your own terms
It doesn’t always end the way you want it to. Brian O’Driscoll’s final game for Leinster saw the legendary centre depart after just a few minutes of the Pro12 Final. Martin Johnson’s Leicester days culminated in a 39-14 Premiership Final trouncing by Wasps. Sam Warburton’s last game as a player was the infamous drawn Test decider with the Lions against New Zealand in 2017.
Sometimes it is not in your control and sport tends not to empathise. As with so many other moments, you just have to deal with it. It’s not easy. But the reaction of Ben Youngs and Dan Cole to their disappointing career climaxes at Twickenham on Saturday was unedifying to say the least.
The anthem we’ll address shortly. But a podcast in which both players took aim squarely at the referee decisions – to the extent of Youngs blaming the referee for a poor playmaking decision – and in which Cole said he wished he’d taken Finn Russell out instead of just jumping into him (there’s no tongue-in-cheek there), isn’t really the right way to go?
For the record: Karl Dickson didn’t have his best game. Neither did a large number of the players from both teams. There’ve been better finals on all levels. But the charge-down by Cole featured a detail which we think was decisive: he had the time in mid-air to recognise that the charge-down attempt had failed, and the time to turn and steel his shoulder before making contact with Russell.
Ostensibly, this was to at least keep the contact point neat. What it also did was ensure that the full weight of Cole dropped into Russell through the most solid part of his upper body.
Russell did not deviate from his own line or position. But if Cole had the time to drop his shoulder and steel himself into the contact, he would also have had time to do something that mitigated that contact. Arms out, maybe. Maybe try and shift the bulk of the body weight from the point of contact. Anything really, except for leading with the shoulder/upper arm into the contact. More than anything else, that was what turned what could have been a penalty into a yellow card. There’s plenty of precedent there, we really don’t know what there is to protest. And the same for the rest of it; Bath got some breaks for sure. But so did Leicester.
“It’s less than 24 hours,” the pair said. “Give us a couple of days to be a bit moany.” Sure. Fill the boots. After the careers the pair have had, they absolutely deserve it. But we really don’t need it to be online in an era when referees need protection every bit as much as the players.
Yellow-carded for breaking a nose
If you ever needed an illustration of just how far we still have to go to make the head contact/tackler taking all the blame a more fair and honest assessment, give the 14th minute of the Top 14 match between Toulon and Castres a squizz.
Facundo Isa storms forward but is scragged by Abraham Papali’i. Castres fly-half Louis le Brun is waiting for the tackle, but with Isa heading towards his outside shoulder and Papali’i being dragged by the contact towards his inside shoulder, it is understandably unclear exactly where Le Brun should put his head.
So he stands upright. Isa, unable to step as he is dragging 110kg of hostile New Zealander, simply slams into Le Brun. Head hits face. Le Brun flies backwards. All go down to the ground. Le Brun is the only one not to get up. All of this unfolds in barely two seconds.
Clearly concussed and with his nose now a good deal flatter to his face than a couple of minutes prior, Le Brun is helped slowly to his feet. He staggers from the pitch, barely able to co-ordinate putting one foot in front of the other. He is then yellow-carded for his apparent lack of tackle technique which is ludicrously harsh; he did not return.
How is this a reflection of the reality? Le Brun had little choice. To put his head and shoulder into that situation was understandably perceived in that instant as too dangerous. There has to be some sort of empathy, some better sort of distinction between laziness, over-aggression and self-perservation. Sending a player from the field for indecision in a moment of significant danger will not make the game better.
What was that?
That version of God Save the King before the Premiership Final does not have one single redeeming feature to it. Please, please, please never again. For the love of God: what is wrong with letting the players and fans sing their anthems together? Why can it not stay a part of rugby’s traditions that the singing of such is the best of any sport? Why do we need some conjured spectacle.
The good, the bad and the ugly
A curious end to the Top 14 Match Access indeed. When the final whistle blew and the sun set on Grenoble’s ambitions for yet another year, it seemed all innocuous. Indeed, Perpignan fans and players alike seemed, after their own celebratory moments, to be commiserating with Grenoble players in fine rugby fashion.
So what it was that sparked off the subsequent unrest is a mystery. It’s all been played down in the French press, who noted both the quick intervention of the stadium staff and the fact that no arrests were necessary. But it was also an unedifying end to a frantic match marked by nervous error after nervous error.
The French will always do things their own way, but perhaps a little more attention to not letting fans onto the pitch at the end of matches?
But here’s a thought: the Perpignan fans were in a block, all together. Would they all have stormed onto the pitch, creating this situation had this not been the case?
Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/loose-pass-leicester-tigers-legends-unedifying-reactions-the-ludicrously-harsh-card-and-the-awful-god-save-the-king-rendition
