Stuart Dickinson
Rugby must enhance its laws governing aerial collisions, former elite referee Stuart Dickinson has argued.
Incidents such as that involving Scotland stand-off Finn Russell, who incurred a 2-week suspension for impeding Wales’ Dan Biggar in the air, have drawn intense scrutiny and debate.
“You could easily say, when you get off the ground, that’s a penalty for dangerous play,” Dickinson said.
“It works both ways.”
Russell was shown a Yellow Card during the 26 / 23 Six Nations defeat to Wales by referee Glen Jackson, but was cited and adjudged to have contravened Laws 10.4 (e) and (i), pertaining to dangerous tackles and contact with mid-air opponents, with his punishment upgraded retrospectively to a Red Card and accompanying ban.
Many, including Russell’s Glasgow Warriors head coach Gregor Townsend, disputed the verdict claiming the grounded Scot could do little to avoid colliding with airborne Biggar.
“Conversely, there could be an argument made to say: there’s a bloke standing there waiting to catch it, you come in at a million miles an hour, jump in the air and take him out,” added Dickinson.
“You as the jumping player have made a clear decision – you’re taking the contest miles up in the air when you don’t really need to. You take all the risks then, that guy’s done nothing other than stand waiting to catch the ball.”
“You’ve created that dangerous situation by leaving the ground. In this case, Russell did move in toward the ball and that would appear to be a contributing factor in the judiciary’s determination.
“But if the bloke’s 3 feet off the ground and all you’re doing is hitting his bootlaces, then you deserve to be penalised or sent off because if you touch him at that height, there’s only going to be 1 outcome.
“That should become the guiding principle – by all means have the contest, but if it goes wrong, be prepared to accept the punishment.”
The 46-year-old Australian officiated 47 international matches between 1997 and 2011, and refereed at 3 World Cups and British and Irish Lions tours respectively.
“I just don’t think you can make a hard and fast rule,” stated Dickinson. “We know what’s clear and obvious: the stupid guy who runs in with arms up and tackles a guy in the air.
“But ones like Russell, well is it the bloke standing still or mistiming his run awkwardly as Russell did? Shouldn’t he have been there? Or is it the guy coming in the air? There’s just no easy answer.
“Incidents like that end up becoming a right-wrong conversation, people take sides, and nothing ever gets solved. It’s bigger than that from a safety point of view, it just takes one of those incidents to go wrong and someone ends up being injured.
“Player safety is paramount irrespective of what’s written or unwritten, but you still need to have a contest for possession. The players and coaches probably don’t want to slow things down to the n’th degree.”
Asked whether World Rugby ought to improve its legislation on the matter, Dickinson replied: “Definitely,” adding: “With referees people keep shooting the messenger.
“The referees will only act according to what the laws say, and that comes down from World Rugby. More importantly, there is coach and player input into that, it should become a holistic view of what the game needs.
“What you don’t want to do is sanitise or take away from the skill base of the game – there is a skill in the kick and everything around that. The bottom line is players looking after players.
“The kick is still an attacking weapon, but it’s judicious, and what should happen is if you do it poorly, the laws and spirit of the game should say you’ll get punished by the other team rather than the referees.”
Aerial ‘contest’ between Dan Biggar and Finn Russell – Russell got a two match ban for this
It has gotten so bad,
that if you “look” at a player in the air,
you are penalised…………………or worse.
Whatever happened to contestability.
I think soccer has about 15 rules…………………………end of.
Rugby has a gazillion rules……………………….and most of them are vague or open to interpretation.
Most of the Players don’t even understand the Rules …………………..That’s why the Ref’s are always yelling at them ………………………..”hands off, its a ruck you f#cking idiots, hands off”.
Rugby …………………………We all love it……………………………but sometimes I wonder why.
The best suggestion Dickinson ever made was to retire.
That said a kiwi like Caner mumbling about the severity of the laws is quite delicious in its irony.
😆
For the life of me I cannot remember the name of RWC 2007’s TMO…
Ja man, that oke who (correctly?) ruled that pommy Mark Cuerto had his foot in touch and so disallowed what would’ve been the match-winning try.
I shudder to think what would’ve happened had he ‘ve made the “wrong” call…
@ BrumbiesBoy:
Not even Dickinside would have dared botch that.
Nonetheless you loyalty to our Antipodean cousins is sweet.
You do know you’re too old to emigrate don’t you ?
😆
@ gunther:
Sigh…if only I could get me paws into the Nkandla trough everything would be sorted.
1 @ cane:
Hi cane yes certainly agree with what you are saying there, it has become quite a complicated game but even though we moan and groan about it we still love it. I am quite pleased that Dickinson has spoken about this incident in particular to highlight the problem as I was unhappy at the time of the handling of it and still maintain to this day that they made a mistake. Wales uses the tactic of launching the Gary Owen into the stratosphere and chasing it quite a lot for a number of seasons now. It seems they are not afraid to gift possession away as they back their chasers to win the ball back and so must spend a lot of time practising this, either through ‘contesting’ in the air or via there good scavengers on the ground. Of course it helps when the ref blows it your way as he did in the Biggar/Russell incident. Biggar hoofs a high one and then chases and launches himself kamikaze style in the air, Russell is on the ground keeping his eye on the ball and must at the last second spot Biggar flying through the air and turns to take evasive action, but in the process this takes him towards Biggar who lands on Russell’s back with his knee from high in the sky and has his fall to the ground cushioned – then Russell gets a yellow card which is upgraded to red and a two week. Now this is on Finn Russell’s record, a young player making progress in the game, and so if he ever appears in front of a committee he doesn’t have a clean record to fall back on.
@ gunther:
Hi gunther to me it was a daft decision, if anything the one thing Russell didn’t do that he maybe should have was leap into the air as well to compete for the ball, however had he done that hindsight shows that there probably would have been quite a nasty mid air collision which could have left the players injured, I wonder what the refs decision would have been had that happened. The only other option if he was quick thinking enough, although not something you would expect a defending player to do, would on spotting the missile that was Biggar flying through the air to try and dive completely out of the way, but then Biggar may have come down harder on the ground than he did as he used Russell as a cushion. As Dickinson says the responsibility should also rest with the player going into the air and not purely on the one who isn’t.
For the record this is a clip of it:
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