[2023 Six Nations] Ireland v England - 18 March 2023

[Leonormous Boozer]

Hardly "flying in".

Sorry, jumping in at high speed.

No it's not a reach, if Tuilagi didn't end up where he is, the Irish player simply falls to the floor. As it is, he instead rolls over Tuilagis back which changes it from him simply falling backwards to instead over-rotating. Tuilagi was not there when he started the tackle and swung around after Willis had initiated the tackle, ie a sudden change in the situation for the tackler.

He's tipped him past the horizontal though, why should any mitigation be considered? Willis created a dangerous position, I really don't know how that one can be argued.

Ireland were the better side but how different would things have been if you were missing 2 players as opposed to England? Ireland were looking better but the game was far from lost before the red. 3 of the 4 tries came after that. It's a massive discrepancy in how the 2 sides were reffed. Going from potentially losing 2 players for the rest of the game to having a 1 then 2 man advantage in the period where you scored 3 tries is huge. This is doubly so when the 2 Irish incidents we have seen were easily as bad if not worse than the English ones. In both cases the Irish players had no mitigation whatsoever, they were fully in control of a stable situation and chose to chuck their shoulders into Ludlams face. Those collisions are exactly the ones the reds are supposed to stop.

Ireland's also weren't a high degree of danger though. Maybe Aki but Ryan's really is not, hence Ludlam staying on the pitch and Keenan going straight off - you realise the brain injuries are what we're trying to stop right?

Presenting an argument that considers Steward staying on the pitch and Ryan getting sent off is madness. Not considering the drop in performance of Ireland losing their best player due to foul play is also.

Without more angles on the Irish incidents it can be a red and a yellow at most. But both need to be examined closer to consider the high degree of danger, Aki's history would suggest to me it probably is there but Ryan never has enough force to even consider a red card.

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

A player staying on the field shouldn't be used for judgement though.

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

A player staying on the field shouldn't be used for judgement though.

When it's used in an "if we didn't get the red card" argument it should. Was the same with Ewels last year, conveniently forgetting Ireland we're without a world class row for the entire game because of him.

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

When it's used in an "if we didn't get the red card" argument it should. Was the same with Ewels last year, conveniently forgetting Ireland we're without a world class row for the entire game because of him.

Ok yeh I agree with that.

 

[Don't Skip Leg Day]

When it's used in an "if we didn't get the red card" argument it should. Was the same with Ewels last year, conveniently forgetting Ireland we're without a world class row for the entire game because of him.

Yeah well we ended up without a world class lock on the pitch when Ewels was unfairly sent off.


Retreats back to snigger at own post.

 

[IT157]

Sorry, jumping in at high speed.

He's tipped him past the horizontal though, why should any mitigation be considered? Willis created a dangerous position, I really don't know how that one can be argued.

Ireland's also weren't a high degree of danger though. Maybe Aki but Ryan's really is not, hence Ludlam staying on the pitch and Keenan going straight off - you realise the brain injuries are what we're trying to stop right?

Presenting an argument that considers Steward staying on the pitch and Ryan getting sent off is madness. Not considering the drop in performance of Ireland losing their best player due to foul play is also.

Without more angles on the Irish incidents it can be a red and a yellow at most. But both need to be examined closer to consider the high degree of danger, Aki's history would suggest to me it probably is there but Ryan never has enough force to even consider a red card.

You realise brain injuries are not necessarily instant and impossible to compare the long term impact of both hits. One might seem worse off at the time, but the effect could be less.

 

[Reiser99]

You realise brain injuries are not necessarily instant and impossible to compare the long term impact of both hits. One might seem worse off at the time, but the effect could be less.

Especially when I think both times it was Ludlum who got hit.

Also thinking about it, shouldn't the head contact also have been picked up by HIA staff.

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

You realise brain injuries are not necessarily instant and impossible to compare the long term impact of both hits. One might seem worse off at the time, but the effect could be less.

Pretty familiar having had to give up the game due to them and dealt with multiple different first responders and specialists yeah. Ludlam either has a negligent medical team working with him or he's fine. Early signs of concussion virtually always arise within about 30 minutes of the impact and in the vast majority of cases, like Keenan's there are immediate indicators.

Far far far more likely Ludlam was fine due to the significantly lower degree of force of his contacts than anything else.

 

[Welsh Exile]

Pretty familiar having had to give up the game due to them

This explains a lot.

 

[Reiser99]

Pretty familiar having had to give up the game due to them and dealt with multiple different first responders and specialists yeah. Ludlam either has a negligent medical team working with him or he's fine. Early signs of concussion virtually always arise within about 30 minutes of the impact and in the vast majority of cases, like Keenan's there are immediate indicators.

Far far far more likely Ludlam was fine due to the significantly lower degree of force of his contacts than anything else.

I know you're familiar, but your answer completely ignores the long term impact. Yes Ludlum may not have shown any symptoms of concussions in the game, but that's two shots to the head that certainly weren't passive. Both players went into his head with force. Maybe different degrees of force, but still force. How can anyone say what impact that will have on his long term health?

For me it's simple. If Steward is punished for a clumsy challenge when he thought he should avoid contact then Van Der Flier (Think it was him) and Aki need to be punished too otherwise it makes a mockery of the system to protect players. It happens too often that some teams get picked up and other missed completely, even when pointed out post game.

 

[General Melchett]

I just watched the Steward red card incident again and he clearly jumps just before the collision which is what you would do to lessen the impact (to avoid having planted feet on the ground). Yes it was technically a red in the current climate but I do have sympathy for him because he's a pretty big unit compared to Keenan. If Keenan had the same collision with JVP and both players went to ground it would have looked more accidental.

 

[Arcturus]

England had the wrong side of the ref for sure but Ireland we're the only team making linebreaks and looking like scoring tries.

I suspect if both teams had the same number of players on the pitch, Ireland would have maybe inched it by a point or two, but it is a bad way to look at the game in terms of line breaks and ability to score tries when Ireland had a man advantage for half the match and a two-man advantage at the end. You could argue that England really stepped up after their thrashing by the French, or Ireland wobbled, that considering the man advantage, Ireland didn't score more tries.

Ludlam ought to have gone off for a HIA. Watching it again, you can see Ludlam do a "WTF" look at the ref, and then stumbles around for a few seconds.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

The RFU lawyers will attempt to overturn the red card. I doubt they'll get too far though.

But surely a citing for both Aki and Ryan.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

The RFU lawyers will attempt to overturn the red card. I doubt they'll get too far though.

But surely a citing for both Aki and Ryan.

There's precedence in the Prem for downgrading reds to yellows/penalty only - but then, as flawed as it is, I trust the RFU's citing process/commission more than I trust Europe/International/whoever will be overseeing this

I would be very surprised if either or Aki/Ryan are cited and would be checking the sky for flying pigs if both were

 

[munstermuffin]

I think issue people are missing here is it isn't Steward doing much wrong. He did what natural instinct does but it is the law as a whole. It is tried to be painted as a clear black and white rule where in these areas there is alot of grey.

 

[munstermuffin]

There's precedence in the Prem for downgrading reds to yellows/penalty only - but then, as flawed as it is, I trust the RFU's citing process/commission more than I trust Europe/International/whoever will be overseeing this

I would be very surprised if either or Aki/Ryan are cited and would be checking the sky for flying pigs if both were

Over that way the sky might throw up a few surprises

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

I know you're familiar, but your answer completely ignores the long term impact. Yes Ludlum may not have shown any symptoms of concussions in the game, but that's two shots to the head that certainly weren't passive. Both players went into his head with force. Maybe different degrees of force, but still force. How can anyone say what impact that will have on his long term health?

For me it's simple. If Steward is punished for a clumsy challenge when he thought he should avoid contact then Van Der Flier (Think it was him) and Aki need to be punished too otherwise it makes a mockery of the system to protect players. It happens too often that some teams get picked up and other missed completely, even when pointed out post game.

I agree with all of this, and I think Peyper is a terrible ref, he loses control of highly charged games and players get hurt. We had the same at home to NZ in 2016, two red card offenses resulted in a single yellow card and we lost our ****.

Cards change games, no disagreement there and at least one was probably missed for Ireland, I'll get back to this. It's the absolute lack of nuance and disregard/misunderstanding of the laws that has done my head in a bit over the last couple of days.

First things first, and this is the last I'll say on this, Steward deserved to be sent off and deserves a ban, albeit the minimum. Arguments against this have been mitigation and the ball being dead.
Mitigation - there is none, Keenan's body height is low when Steward enters the contact situation, there's no material change in direction either. No mitigation.
The ball being dead - It wasn't, the whistle hadn't been blown. There's two ways of looking at this, firstly, if the ball hadn't gone forward and Steward did what he did, absolutely no one would be complaining about the red card. Secondly, knowing that the ball did go forward, Keenan absolutely has to go for it, otherwise he risks giving England the opportunity to regather. Steward on the other hand does not have to go for that ball, he was never going to beat Keenan to it and makes a desperate attempt anyway, he loses control of himself and is coming into the contact area at high speed, he then has a bad reaction to his initial mistake and turns his elbow into the ball carrier. There's nothing in the laws of the game that can reduce that contact from a red card, Steward's bad reaction to a dropped ball led to the worst possible result for both players in the proceeding contact.

So after arguing that Steward should be allowed stay on the pitch I've seen a lot of arguments (not confined to here by the way, just adding to my frustration) saying Ryan and Aki should have seen red. This is ignoring two elements of our laws that can reduce penalties for head contact: was there a high degree of force; and was it active or passive contact.

On Ryan I don't think there's a high degree of force, he makes head contact but otherwise, it's a controlled movement where he does everything correctly. It is in that grey area of yellow card or penalty only but nothing beyond that.

On Aki, I think there is a high degree of force, its not obvious from the clip but it looks like their might be some recoil following impact. It's very hard to tell from that one angle whether it's passive or active though and that lands us into a range where it could be anything from a penalty only to a red card depending on both factors.

Fwiw, I don't like the active/passive contact rule, if you have bad body position in contact with no mitigation you should walk.

Ultimately the game was decided by discipline. The most disciplined side in the world against arguably the least. When Ireland did make mistakes they were still relatively controlled and not obvious to the point they were missed by a bad officiating team. When England made mistakes they were so obvious that they couldn't be missed, their ref talk was pretty awful too, they'd quite clearly pumped themselves up and lost the head following last week.

Did the officiating change the match? Absolutely.
The result? No way, we were winning and in the ascendency 15v15 and showed enough discipline and skill to close out following the reductions in numbers. England played the same way all game and lived off scraps and uncharacteristic mistakes.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

I think issue people are missing here is it isn't Steward doing much wrong. He did what natural instinct does but it is the law as a whole. It is tried to be painted as a clear black and white rule where in these areas there is alot of grey.

The mitigation criteria is supposed to allow covering for the grey areas, it doesn't matter if the refs decide not to apply it. TBH I feel the current system in place is the best way (criteria for starting level of punishment then look for mitigation), but the problem is the inconsistency with which it is applied, which arguably points to the ref's discretion being the problem. Giving the ref more leeway will likely not fix this.

The only change I think is that sometimes red is too harsh a punishment for what can be purely accidental incidents. I feel red should be reserved for extremely reckless or intentional stuff, not accidents that happened to end badly.

On Ryan I don't think there's a high degree of force, he makes head contact but otherwise, it's a controlled movement where he does everything correctly. It is in that grey area of yellow card or penalty only but nothing beyond that.

On Aki, I think there is a high degree of force, its not obvious from the clip but it looks like their might be some recoil following impact. It's very hard to tell from that one angle whether it's passive or active though and that lands us into a range where it could be anything from a penalty only to a red card depending on both factors.

Sorry but no. If Ryan "did everything correctly" and was controlled and still smacked a player in the head with force, that only means he intentionally targeted the head. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn if you argue he was in control and nothing materially changed as he went in. If he didn't intend to hit the player in the head then we was NOT in control. You can't say he did everything right and was in control but then didn't intend to hit the player in the head, these are contradictory statements. There very clearly was force in the hit by Ryan, he hit that ruck the same way as a player clearing out would.

No way is Aki a passive defender, he is going forwards and driving into the tackle. Neither case had any mitigating factors.

 

[Reiser99]

I agree with all of this, and I think Peyper is a terrible ref, he loses control of highly charged games and players get hurt. We had the same at home to NZ in 2016, two red card offenses resulted in a single yellow card and we lost our ****.

Cards change games, no disagreement there and at least one was missed for Ireland, I'll get back to this. It's the absolute lack of nuance and disregard/misunderstanding of the laws that has done my head in a bit over the last couple of days.

First things first, and this is the last I'll say on this, Steward deserved to be sent off and deserves a ban, albeit the minimum. Arguments against this have been mitigation and the ball being dead.
Mitigation - there is none, Keenan's body height is low when Steward enters the contact situation, there's no material change in direction either. No mitigation.
The ball being dead - It wasn't, the whistle hadn't been blown. There's two ways of looking at this, firstly, if the ball hadn't gone forward and Steward did what he did, absolutely no one would be complaining about the red card. Secondly, knowing that the ball did go forward, Keenan absolutely has to go for it, otherwise he risks giving England the opportunity to regather. Steward on the other hand does not have to go for that ball, he was never going to beat Keenan to it and makes a desperate attempt anyway, he loses control of himself and is coming into the contact area at high speed, he then has a bad reaction to his initial mistake and turns his elbow into the ball carrier. There's nothing in the laws of the game that can reduce that contact from a red card, Steward's bad reaction to a dropped ball led to the worst possible result for both players in the proceeding contact.

So after arguing that Steward should be allowed stay on the pitch I've seen a lot of arguments (not confined to here by the way, just adding to my frustration) saying Ryan and Aki should have seen red. This is ignoring two elements of our laws that can reduce penalties for head contact: was there a high degree of force; and was it active or passive contact.

On Ryan I don't think there's a high degree of force, he makes head contact but otherwise, it's a controlled movement where he does everything correctly. It is in that grey area of yellow card or penalty only but nothing beyond that.

On Aki, I think there is a high degree of force, its not obvious from the clip but it looks like their might be some recoil following impact. It's very hard to tell from that one angle whether it's passive or active though and that lands us into a range where it could be anything from a penalty only to a red card depending on both factors.

Fwiw, I don't like the active/passive contact rule, if you have bad body position in contact with no mitigation you should walk.

Ultimately the game was decided by discipline. The most disciplined side in the world against arguably the least. When Ireland did make mistakes they were still relatively controlled and not obvious to the point they were missed by a bad officiating team. When England made mistakes they were so obvious that they couldn't be missed, their ref talk was pretty awful too, they'd quite clearly pumped themselves up and lost the head following last week.

Did the officiating change the match? Absolutely.
The result? No way, we were winning and in the ascendency 15v15 and showed enough discipline and skill to close out following the reductions in numbers. England played the same way all game and lived off scraps and uncharacteristic mistakes.

Trust me, no one is disagreeing with the result. I'm happy for Steward to be dealt with by the citing commission. However, if he gets the same ban as others who have been dangerous then it will undermine everything. This is the main issue. We need consistency and an improvement in how incidents are dealt with post game because otherwise it's all just for show and not about player welfare. If it is about player welfare then at minimum the citing commissioner should acknowledge the Aki and Ryan incidents and say that they didn't warrant a red card. To ignore them completely is pathetic.

 

[AlRums]

I agree with all of this, and I think Peyper is a terrible ref, he loses control of highly charged games and players get hurt. We had the same at home to NZ in 2016, two red card offenses resulted in a single yellow card and we lost our ****.

Cards change games, no disagreement there and at least one was probably missed for Ireland, I'll get back to this. It's the absolute lack of nuance and disregard/misunderstanding of the laws that has done my head in a bit over the last couple of days.

First things first, and this is the last I'll say on this, Steward deserved to be sent off and deserves a ban, albeit the minimum. Arguments against this have been mitigation and the ball being dead.
Mitigation - there is none, Keenan's body height is low when Steward enters the contact situation, there's no material change in direction either. No mitigation.
The ball being dead - It wasn't, the whistle hadn't been blown. There's two ways of looking at this, firstly, if the ball hadn't gone forward and Steward did what he did, absolutely no one would be complaining about the red card. Secondly, knowing that the ball did go forward, Keenan absolutely has to go for it, otherwise he risks giving England the opportunity to regather. Steward on the other hand does not have to go for that ball, he was never going to beat Keenan to it and makes a desperate attempt anyway, he loses control of himself and is coming into the contact area at high speed, he then has a bad reaction to his initial mistake and turns his elbow into the ball carrier. There's nothing in the laws of the game that can reduce that contact from a red card, Steward's bad reaction to a dropped ball led to the worst possible result for both players in the proceeding contact.

So after arguing that Steward should be allowed stay on the pitch I've seen a lot of arguments (not confined to here by the way, just adding to my frustration) saying Ryan and Aki should have seen red. This is ignoring two elements of our laws that can reduce penalties for head contact: was there a high degree of force; and was it active or passive contact.

On Ryan I don't think there's a high degree of force, he makes head contact but otherwise, it's a controlled movement where he does everything correctly. It is in that grey area of yellow card or penalty only but nothing beyond that.

On Aki, I think there is a high degree of force, its not obvious from the clip but it looks like their might be some recoil following impact. It's very hard to tell from that one angle whether it's passive or active though and that lands us into a range where it could be anything from a penalty only to a red card depending on both factors.

Fwiw, I don't like the active/passive contact rule, if you have bad body position in contact with no mitigation you should walk.

Ultimately the game was decided by discipline. The most disciplined side in the world against arguably the least. When Ireland did make mistakes they were still relatively controlled and not obvious to the point they were missed by a bad officiating team. When England made mistakes they were so obvious that they couldn't be missed, their ref talk was pretty awful too, they'd quite clearly pumped themselves up and lost the head following last week.

Did the officiating change the match? Absolutely.
The result? No way, we were winning and in the ascendency 15v15 and showed enough discipline and skill to close out following the reductions in numbers. England played the same way all game and lived off scraps and uncharacteristic mistakes.

I agree, very well reasoned