Wallabies and All Blacks greats Jeremy Paul and Justin Marshall have hit out at the decision to red card Ireland lock Tadhg Beirne for his tackle on Beauden Barrett.
Referee Pierre Brousset issued a yellow card to Beirne after his clumsy collision with Beauden Barrett during the opening stages of the clash at Soldier Field in Chicago on Saturday. The Frenchman had been notified by the TMO that a potential high tackle had occurred and duly deemed it to meet the yellow card threshold.
As per protocol, Brousset sent the incident to be reviewed by the Foul Play Review Officer [FPRO], who ultimately deemed it to be ‘a high level’ of danger and upgraded the yellow card to red.
Mitigation
“It was a disgrace,” ex-Wallabies hooker Jeremy Paul remarked on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby AUNZ podcast.
“I felt there was mitigation because it was a forward pass, and Barrett was really, really tight on that run and caught Tadhg Beirne by surprise more than anything else, and I didn’t feel that he could have reacted any other way. I thought he braced.
“I didn’t feel like it was a red card. I thought yes, a yellow and a penalty, but I thought it was incredibly harsh to be a red.”
Former All Blacks scrum-half Marshall, who was part of the punditry team in Chicago, agreed with Paul’s review of the incident, maintaining the viewpoint he had during the game.
He also disagreed that it was a high level of danger and pointed to the fact that the doctors didn’t deem the contact bad enough to warrant an HIA for Barrett.
“It’s frustrating, the inconsistency, they talk about mitigation, they talk about trying to eliminate head contact from the game, there’s no
doubt about that,” he said.
“But mitigation plays a part, and mitigation is things like what happened to the player in terms of Beauden Barrett, was he affected? No, he wasn’t; he didn’t even have to go off the field for an HIA, so it was minimal head contact, as deemed by the doctor who looks at the HIA situations throughout the game, and there were other players who had to leave the field for that, both from Ireland and New Zealand.
“When they see that, and they go ‘That’s a decent contact and it requires an assessment’, that wasn’t the case with Beauden Barrett. So first and foremost, it’s not that bad because he’s not been asked to leave the field. So, the contact has been yes to the head area, but not at a high level of danger, and that’s the margins that we’re trying to work in.
“I even said in commentary, at the end of the day, they’re probably going to have to give a yellow, but it looks just like a penalty to me, but if they referee it under the law of the game and officiate it under that, then yes, you have to give it a yellow because it is head contact.
“Beirne wasn’t lowering his body height – all those things come into, right, give it a yellow. I thought, right, that’s 10 minutes, a little bit harsh, but under the laws it’s fine. And then when it came red, I was just like, ‘Are you f****ng serious?’ I could not believe what I was hearing from the TMO to the ref saying, ‘That’s a red card’. This guy’s taking no further part and it’s a high level of danger.
“I was just thinking, ‘Why are you not seeing what everybody else in the world is seeing, you guys?’”
Struggling with European referees
He adds that Brousset should have risked breaking protocol by overruling the FPRO but admits that none of the referees would really consider doing that.
“For them, then not to go back to the TMO, and referee Brousset to go back to TMO and say ‘That might have been what you said, but I’ve got to consider your review wrong and I’m going to leave that as a yellow’ but they don’t have the balls, or I guess they don’t have the ability to overrule that so everybody ‘Goes referee, referee, referee’ but it wasn’t his call both situations were the TMO, yellow card was TMO and red card was TMO. The referees are just going off the advice he has been given,” he added.
Podcast host Andy Rowe theorised that had Australian referee Angus Gardner overseen the decision, it would have been an entirely different outcome and awarded a penalty at the most.
Paul and Marshall both agreed, with the former stating that he ‘struggles’ with northern hemisphere match officials’ interpretations.
“We’ve seen all Southern Hemisphere referees do that, actually. I’m really struggling with these French and European referees, like the Italian guy,” the ex-front rower said.
“I’m really struggling with their interpretations, and I thank God that there was sanity where they actually had the 20-minute red card; we can see the difference it makes now in a game.”
All Blacks great slams Tadhg Beirne’s ‘absolute joke’ red card and issues warning to World Rugby
Marshall’s verdict
While he hailed Ireland’s ability to score a try during the period when they were down a man for 20 minutes and Marshall agreed, the ex-All Black stated that it still had a negative impact on the match, particularly for Ireland.
“They absolutely did [have a good crack] and I concur with what you’ve said JP, but at the end of the day, a decision like that completely changes things,” Marshall said.
“I would be saying this if it were England, Australia, South Africa, the All Blacks, whoever it might be. 20 minutes is 20 minutes.
“Yes, they survived that, and they scored a try, but all of a sudden, Andy Farrell has to adjust his thinking on the way that he now approaches the game and has to introduce players into that game that he wasn’t expecting to introduce – he has to change the look of his back-row and his middle-row, and all of a sudden, the game plan is forced upon him.
“Not just surviving 20 minutes, but how the rest of the game looks because of a really, really poor decision. Everybody has commended on Ireland on surviving that period, but equally, it had ramifications regardless of the situation; getting the decision wrong affected the game for Ireland, and that’s categorically how I feel about it.
“Ireland were really smart in managing that period, as some teams just kick the piss out of the ball, and it becomes a real territory-based game, and they just survive for the period of time, maybe not concede any points, maybe grab three themselves, but they had huge intent.
“But the problem is, we can’t dismiss the effect that decision had on the game.
“A Ben O’Keeffe Angus Gardner, or remember in the Lions series, Paul Williams, with the legal cleanout that made contact with the head, and he saw it for what it was. He went, ‘There’s heaps of mitigation there’. Yes, it was head contact, but there’s nothing either player could have done differently.
“He basically made a call outside of what the TMO was telling him. I thought, ‘Fair play, mate. That was the most awesome thing I’ve seen.’”