Nigel Owens says that Craig Casey was correctly yellow-carded for his tackle on Lorenzo Cannone during the Six Nations clash at the Aviva Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Ireland<\/a> scrum-half spent 10 minutes in the sin-bin after he made head-on-head contact with the Azzurri number eight during the first half of Andy Farrell\u2019s side\u2019s 20-13 victory.<\/p>\n The incident sparked a debate online over the balance of sanctions against the tackler as many believed that Cannone dipped into the contact.<\/p>\n It was also claimed that Casey<\/a> didn\u2019t have much time to react to the dynamics of the carry from the Italian<\/a>, particularly after Joe McCarthy made the initial contact with a leg tackle on the back-rower who was angling in-field.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll say that is his duty to get lower, but sometimes it shocks you when somebody steps back into you or whatever,\u201d Ireland head coach Farrell said after the game.<\/p>\n \u201cIt needs cleaning up in my opinion, because you get a broken nose and you didn\u2019t even know that it happened. It\u2019s hard to take, isn\u2019t it sometimes?\u201d<\/p>\n Nigel Owens\u2019 verdict<\/p>\n The optics certainly didn\u2019t help with the smaller Casey coming off second-best in the contact and ultimately broke his nose.<\/p>\n Speaking on World Rugby\u2019s Whistle Watch<\/a> show, Owens says that the correct decision was reached by Hollie Davidson and her officiating team after TMO Ian Tempest notified the referee about the foul play.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all, I think it was the correct decision,\u201d said the ex-referee who officiated over 100 Test matches.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was watching this, I was chuckling, probably the shortest man on the field and he\u2019s managed to make head contact with a big guy here.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they\u2019d look at here, is do you have head contact? Yes, you do. So the action is always upright. So that\u2019s the first trigger for the referee. Now, if you\u2019re upright and make a tackle, you\u2019re not doing anything illegal unless you make contact with the head or the neck. In this instance, he does.\u201d<\/p>\n Law discussion: Why arguments for Craig Casey\u2019s yellow card stink of bias<\/a><\/p>\n Ex-England star \u2018not worried\u2019 about Ireland as he delivers message ahead of Twickenham clash<\/a><\/p>\n Owens agreed with the Foul Player Review Officer that a yellow card was a sufficient punishment, as the degree of danger for Cannone did not warrant an upgrade to a red card.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause it\u2019s a very low degree of danger, it does reach the threshold of the yellow card for the bunker to have a look at it. And they deem that the actual contact and impact was very low degree of danger, because of that, then quite rightly so remained at the yellow card,\u201d Owens explained.<\/p>\n \u201cSome may well have argued that a penalty would have sufficed.\u201d<\/p>\n