Inconsistent officiating threatens rugby's integrity

RED cards are not ruining rugby - inconsistent officiating is. And the sooner the sport's powerbrokers admit that, the sooner we can stop pretending that the chaos unfolding weekly across Test arenas is anything other than a failure of interpretation and consistency.

- LEIGHTON KOOPMAN

SPRINGBOKS coach Rassie Erasmus had to choose his words carefully following a second highly questionable red card in as many games for the Springboks this past weekend against Italy.

(AFP)

This past weekend once again exposed the gulf in how referees and TMOs deal with head-contact incidents, and how the colour of a jersey - or the hemisphere a team hails from - too often appears to influence outcomes. The narrative that strict sanctioning is protecting players and the safety of the game is only believable if those sanctions are applied evenly. Right now, they're not.

Take Franco Mostert's straight red card against Italy on Saturday.

Officials claimed head contact. The replays suggested something else: no clear contact to the head of the tackled player and certainly nothing warranting a full red. It should have been play-on in fact. Yet Mostert walked, and South Africa was forced to play with 14 men. Despite that, they claimed a brilliant fighting victory.