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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
As per protocol, Brousset sent the incident to be reviewed by the Foul Play Review Officer [FPRO], who ultimately deemed it to be \u2018a high level\u2019 of danger and upgraded the yellow card to red.<\/p>\n
Mitigation<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a disgrace,\u201d ex-Wallabies hooker Jeremy Paul remarked on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby AUNZ<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt there was mitigation because it was a forward pass, and Barrett was really, really tight on that run and caught Tadhg Beirne<\/a> by surprise more than anything else, and I didn\u2019t feel that he could have reacted any other way. I thought he braced.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Former All Blacks<\/a> scrum-half Marshall, who was part of the punditry team in Chicago, agreed with Paul\u2019s review of the incident, maintaining the viewpoint he had during the game.<\/p>\n He also disagreed that it was a high level of danger and pointed to the fact that the doctors didn\u2019t deem the contact bad enough to warrant an HIA for Barrett.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating, the inconsistency, they talk about mitigation, they talk about trying to eliminate head contact from the game, there\u2019s no \u201cBut 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\u2019t; he didn\u2019t 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<\/a> and New Zealand.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they see that, and they go \u2018That\u2019s a decent contact and it requires an assessment\u2019, that wasn\u2019t the case with Beauden Barrett. So first and foremost, it\u2019s not that bad because he\u2019s 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\u2019s the margins that we\u2019re trying to work in.<\/p>\n Touch of class as Beauden Barrett offers to help fight Tadhg Beirne\u2019s red card that left Andy Farrell baffled<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI even said in commentary, at the end of the day, they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n \u201cBeirne wasn\u2019t lowering his body height \u2013 all those things come into, right, give it a yellow. I thought, right, that\u2019s 10 minutes, a little bit harsh, but under the laws it\u2019s fine. And then when it came red, I was just like, \u2018Are you f****ng serious?\u2019 I could not believe what I was hearing from the TMO to the ref saying, \u2018That\u2019s a red card\u2019. This guy\u2019s taking no further part and it\u2019s a high level of danger.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just thinking, \u2018Why are you not seeing what everybody else in the world is seeing, you guys?’\u201d<\/p>\n Ex-Irish ref boss slams \u2018clearly incorrect\u2019 Tadhg Beirne red card exposes \u2018wider\u2019 World Rugby problem<\/a><\/p>\n Struggling with European referees<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cFor them, then not to go back to the TMO, and referee Brousset to go back to TMO and say \u2018That might have been what you said, but I\u2019ve got to consider your review wrong and I\u2019m going to leave that as a yellow\u2019 but they don\u2019t have the balls, or I guess they don\u2019t have the ability to overrule that so everybody \u2018Goes referee, referee, referee\u2019 but it wasn\u2019t 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,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Paul and Marshall both agreed, with the former stating that he \u2018struggles\u2019 with northern hemisphere match officials\u2019 interpretations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen all Southern Hemisphere referees do that, actually. I\u2019m really struggling with these French and European referees, like the Italian guy,\u201d the ex-front rower said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
doubt about that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n