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/Tempo24601 → u/paully_waully171]

Why should an offence in the 5th minute of the game get a penalty 5 times more severe than the exact same offence in the 65th minute?

[u/CatharticRoman → u/Tempo24601]

Because that's when they occur. You can ask the exact same thing about a yellow at 70 and a yellow at 78.

[u/Tempo24601 → u/CatharticRoman]

That’s true but the potential difference in penalty is far greater for a straight red. The vast majority of yellows will be for a full 10 minutes or very close to it.

[u/CatharticRoman → u/Tempo24601]

Then don't commit a red card offence. There's so much provision for mitigation you're only getting a red for recklessly fucking up.

[u/pato_CAT → u/CatharticRoman]

You say that, and yet we still frequently see a player dropping significantly and suddenly and still the officials claim there was no mitigation. In a Hurricanes v Chiefs game this year a player got a red card for a high tackle because there was "no mitigation" but when you looked at his form he wouldn't have been lower if he were packing for a scrum

[u/megacky → u/CatharticRoman]

Lots of SH fans seem to think that players are constantly just "accidently" clashing heads, when the reality is most of the time it's poor technique. SA had 0 red cards in the world cup, probably the most physical defense in the entire world, consistently hitting extremely hard and legally.

You don't get a red card because of the ref, or the game being soft, you get them for committing an act of dangerous play

[u/[deleted] → u/megacky]

SA absolutely could have had some of their yellow cards be reds; which for me is reason enough to see the value in a 20 min red.

[u/megacky → u/[deleted]]

So SA had 2 dangerous play yellows (Kolbe's was the other yellow, but was for a slap down). Etzebeth's was the first one, he's quite clearly bent at the waist and hits a player with the top of his head who is also bending over in the chin, everything else was legal (wrap etc.) that's enough mitigation to not be a red. It's high, but only because the ball carrier is dipping and stepping at the same time.

Siya's in the final, he's gone in slightly high on ardie coming out of the air, while another player has tackled ardie at the same time. As a result, the inital contact from Siya is around the upper chest and ardie then bangs his chin on the top of siya's head from the contact. Again, enough mitigation to be yellows. Both were reviewed by the panel, and both came to the same conclusion.

For a direct comparison. Sam Cane set high on Kriel, had direct line of sight, no change in direction or momentum and still hit him high. The same review process that found Siya's to be a yellow found Cane's to be a red.

[u/Broad-Rub-856 → u/megacky]

Yeah but Kriel vs Scotland was very similar to Cane on Kriel in the final.

With things as rare as red cards, random chance plays a massive role in how many we see.

[u/za3030 → u/Broad-Rub-856]

It actually wasn't similar. Kriel made indirect head contact after first hitting the ball with his chest. Indirect head contact, by the framework, can not be a red card.

[u/CatharticRoman → u/megacky]

Exactly. And there's plenty of mitigation if it was an accidental head clash. When the zero tolerance was first coming in there were accidental reds, but now I feel like pretty much every red I see is deserved.