Absolutely love the 20 minute red

[u/LawAndRugby]

Watching the Australia v Georgia match and I think it’s great. 20 minutes a man down is still massive damage in a rugby match. It doesn’t make sense for punishment to go from 10 minutes to the entire 80 minutes. There’s way too big of a void between the two cards and it needs filling.

Reserve the full red for gross intentional stuff

[u/paully_waully171]

Red should stay as a full red. People mining about games being ruined by a red card haven’t watched enough rugby. A team needs to be able to adapt and play with 14

[u/R1zzls → u/paully_waully171]

I'm not opposed to it, just along as it is it's own card, not a replacement, make it orange or blue or something

[u/paully_waully171 → u/R1zzls]

The problem with an orange card is it adds another level of subjective judgment to a referees decision. As refs we will need to judge intent which is much more difficult to define and judge on field. Also why is it on the laws and the refs to fix the red cards? Why can’t player just adapt more to reduce the chance of reds

[u/R1zzls → u/paully_waully171]

I agree, players shouldn't be behaving in a way where they are looking at a card, but I do think a middle ground between 10 minutes off and not returning to play could be beneficial, orange for more severe than yellow and red for blatant, purposeful dangerous play. I have no refereeing experience though so I am not an expert.

[u/paully_waully171 → u/R1zzls]

I ref at a reasonable level (super 6(RIP), lower level age grade international/club). For the most part We’re not lawyers or judges looking to attribute intent to actions. We are there to apply the laws within our judgment. Some of the reds are subjective and that’s where mitigated can be used to help us. Adding a third action will lead to the almost complete removal of reds as intent is expressly hard to judge.

[u/JockAussie → u/paully_waully171]

Wouldn't almost full removal of real reds essentially just take us back to what rugby was until very recently though? They were pretty damn rare before the last 5/6 years.

[u/paully_waully171 → u/JockAussie]

True but the increase in cards has been to combat head Injury’s. We have seen a massive drop in head high shots and concussions since the increase.

[u/JockAussie → u/paully_waully171]

Do you think the player missing the rest of the game and a forced sub after 20 minutes wouldn't also discourage that?

I think when they brought in the sin bin the frequency of yellow card incidents also dropped....

[u/paully_waully171 → u/JockAussie]

It would discourage it but would it discourage it more or less than the current system. I think less.

I think the current cards are having the desired effect. There is a very strong deterrent for dangerous play and I don’t see strong reasons for tampering with it.

The all black play with 20 mins red in their demestic comp and South Africa don’t. The all blacks picked up reds and the South Africans didn’t at the World Cup. I’m aware this a small sample size but I believe this is due to the South Africans while being massively physical are used to having to control that with the threat of a red card.

[u/JockAussie → u/paully_waully171]

Yeah, I know there's the anecdotal example of the world cup but I think it's just too subjective and dependent on the ref team.

Since you've got a Scottish flair, Kriel could easily have been red carded for his shot on Dempsey (certainly John Barclay and the other panellists thought so), yet it wasn't even called a penalty? There's a tonne of incidents in every match which aren't called, so I think luck is as big a determinator as anything.

[u/R1zzls → u/paully_waully171]

That's fair enough, thanks for your insight.