{"id":543643,"date":"2026-07-25T16:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T16:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/543643\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T16:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T16:08:08","slug":"nigel-owens-very-lucky-verdict-on-all-blacks-stars-yellow-card-i-would-have-given-a-red","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/543643\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigel Owens’ ‘very lucky’ verdict on All Blacks star’s yellow card: ‘I would have given a red’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former international referee Nigel Owens says that All Blacks flanker Luke Jacobson is lucky that he wasn\u2019t red-carded in the Nations Championship clash against Ireland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Chiefs star was sent to the sin bin in the 27th minute of New Zealand\u2019s 40-21 victory over the Irish in round three of the competition after his dangerous clear-out on opposing number seven Josh van der Flier.<\/p>\n

Referee Nic Berry deemed that the challenge met the yellow card threshold, having reviewed the incident with TMO Ben Whitehouse before issuing the sanction and referring it to the Foul Play Review Officer, Andrew Jackson.<\/p>\n

Jackson deemed that there was enough mitigation to not upgrade the sanction to a red card, as he believed that James Ryan\u2019s involvement hindered Jacobson\u2019s<\/a> ability to make a legal clearout.<\/p>\n

Nigel Owen\u2019s verdict on Luke Jacobson\u2019s yellow card<\/p>\n

Owens<\/a> reviewed the incident on World Rugby\u2019s Whistle Watch show along with Wales legend Jamie Roberts.<\/p>\n

The former centre kickstarted the debate, saying: \u201cIt looks like he comes off his feet. Does he tuck? Does he not? Hits the Ireland player in the head. Now, is this a yellow card or red? We\u2019ve seen reds given for this, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is literally what the match officials will have discussed, and everybody has discussed this decision. And the main factor is they felt there was mitigation,\u201d Owens replied, explaining how the officials reached the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what they felt was that when the guy was coming in, now I don\u2019t like this action; this action diving off your feet into a contact situation is dangerous, and this is what can happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I don\u2019t like that, and so that\u2019s not allowed; that shouldn\u2019t be happening in the first place. So what they felt was he was going to make a legal clear-out, and if you look, there\u2019s an Irish player on the wrong side now who\u2019s actually getting out of the way, and then that contributes to what the next action of the New Zealand player is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ex-All Black picks out his Nations Championship stars as South African \u2018gazelle\u2019 praised while surprise New Zealand selection \u2018rises to the challenge\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

While the former referee understands why the officiating team reached the decision that they did, he does not agree that it was the right one. Jacobson also escaped sanction after the match as the citing commissioner also did not feel that the All Black\u2019<\/a>s\u00a0actions met the red card threshold and opted not to cite him.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor those reasons, they feel that this yellow card is then correct because of that mitigation,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, I think he\u2019s very lucky because he\u2019s always illegal. I am not seeing that dive with his arm tucked back here as anything that you would naturally do to clear out. Personally, I would have given a 20-minute red card for this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you want to see the arm wrapping,\u201d Roberts questioned.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to see that diving off action,\u201d Owens said.<\/p>\n

How All Blacks\u2019 vast array of playmakers can break down the Springboks defence as Sir Steve Hansen pinpoints South Africa\u2019s linchpin<\/a><\/p>\n

Nigel Owens calls for action after \u2018totally unacceptable\u2019 referee \u2018abuse\u2019 following Argentina\u2019s disallowed try decision against England<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf there are players on the wrong side, the referee will deal with that, but just remember when you tackle somebody, sometimes you are going to be the wrong side. It\u2019s what you do next; then you take into account if it\u2019s a penalty or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the Irish player [Ryan] does what he has to do, which is to try and get out of the way. The mitigation is that they felt that this would have been a legal clear-out if that Irish player wasn\u2019t getting up, contributing to what the action does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for world-class coverage you can trust.<\/p>\n

Ireland are a \u2018pack of whingers\u2019<\/p>\n

Jacobson\u2019s yellow card proved incredibly controversial, with former Ireland captain Peter O\u2019Mahony slamming the overall performance of referee Berry<\/a> on Virgin Media\u2019s coverage of the game.<\/p>\n

Ex-All Blacks scrum-half Justin Marshall hit back, blasting Ireland<\/a> as a \u2018pack of whingers\u2019, adding that Andy Farrell\u2019s men did not make the most of their opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re moaning about Jacobson, but at the stage Jacobson was in the bin, they tried to run out of their own half. They were clunky like they were all night because the All Blacks put their pod system under pressure and stuffed up their block play. Will Jordan picks it up, and they give the All Blacks seven points,\u201d he said on the GBRANZ podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t blame anyone else for that apart from yourselves; you\u2019ve just given that away, off the back of scoring a try yourself and the All Blacks down a man.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou throw it along the ground and Will Jordan basically will never, ever score an easier try in his life. It\u2019s your fault so stop trying to look for excuses everywhere else, just look yourself in the mirror Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: All Blacks great blasts Ireland as a \u2018pack of whingers\u2019 who should stop \u2018blaming everyone else\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former international referee Nigel Owens says that All Blacks flanker Luke Jacobson is lucky that he wasn\u2019t red-carded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1463,1464,8019,267264,267265,254352,111,43,139,162222,69,213],"class_list":["post-543643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-ireland","tag-jamie-roberts","tag-luke-jacobson","tag-nations-championship","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nigel-owens","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}