Draconian shift will be virtually impossible for referees to enforce and will do little to reduce the number of head injuries
Never accuse rugby union’s authorities of doing things by half. After the red cards will come the deluge of penalties. From next season, the community game in England will see tacklers penalised for any contact above the waist of a ball-carrier.
The move – which will apply to National One and below in the men’s game and Championship One and below in the women’s game – has already precipitated howls of protest from across the sport. The reactions of coaches and players past and present, some suffering the neurodegenerative legacy of their years in the game, have run the gamut from the uneasy to the splutteringly apoplectic. It is difficult to see how such a draconian shift in the dynamics of the sport could possibly work without referees developing the sort of myopia normally reserved for crooked feeds at the scrum.
