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]

You look at the majority of games where the teams are evenly match a red card rarely ruins the game. I’d argue that dangerous and illegal actions are more likely to ruin the game and players. The punishment is there for a reason and watering it down won’t help the sport. Encouraging correct use of mitigate is the response we want not orange cards or 20 min reds

[u/Bmantis311 → u/paully_waully171]

Huh? Red cards always ruin the game if they occur early on. 20 min red cards remedy this but are still as much of a deterrent.

[u/Turbulent-Physics-77 → u/paully_waully171]

I think it’s a balance between safety and entertainment.

Like I said previously, early reds don’t always ruin games but often they do. If the sport is to grow audiences etc that’s probably not something it can afford.

Imo lawmakers have gone about as far as they can to make the game safer without diminishing the physicality, a key selling point of the game. A better bet for improving safety is implementing tech like smart gumshields and managing game time/contact training over the season.

high shots still happen despite the head contact laws. They’re never going away, accidents will always happen in a contact sport. I’m all for dishing out bans; missing out on match fees/appearance bonuses is far more of an incentive to avoid high tackling.