The ‘ban’ dished out to Bismarck du Plessis flies in the face of rugby's commitment to a safer game

Jonathan Bradley

March 28 2022 04:44 PM

Given how their game against the Stormers concluded on Saturday afternoon, it would be a brave man or woman to raise the issue of United Rugby Championship officiating over breakfast in Ulster’s Pretoria hotel this week.

Yet the northern province are adjacent to an error much more grave than anything to be found in the Zapruder-style analysis of whether Callum Reid did or didn’t knock the ball forward in grounding what would have been a match-winning score.

The non-try was, much to Ulster chagrin, chalked off by the Television Match Official. A concept that has now entered into its third decade. It is to rugby what VAR is to football or Hawkeye to tennis.

Occasionally a torturously long process that has contributed to games approaching the two-hour mark becoming increasingly common, there was nothing drawn out about its usage when Munster faced the Bulls in Loftus Versfeld earlier month.

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It was in the 70th minute of his side’s victory that, for reasons unknown, Bismarck du Plessis, a Springbok World Cup winner with Test 79 caps to his name, hoisted Munster back-rower Alex Kendellen into the air then over his shoulder and dumped him unceremoniously into the turf.

An act committed yards from both the referee and his assistant, with his team in possession and on the attack, was so brazen as to qualify as bizarre.

Short, sharp, shrill blasts of Ben Whitehouse’s whistle indicated the severity of what we had just witnessed with the question ‘has there been foul play?’ as redundant as any since ‘would you like chips with that?’

Rather than pore over all available angles of what anyone who had even once accidentally stood next to a rugby game knew warranted a dismissal, the Welsh referee’s simple summation of “I don’t need to see any more… that’s going to be a red card,” brought swift justice.

The phrase ‘that belongs in WWE’ is an overused one in any contact sport but, genuinely, if Stone Cold Steve Austin had pulled off such a move on The Undertaker, we’d have been debating if he was the new favourite for Wrestlemania.

Such is the nature of social media that even those who had been paying little attention to a game that took place on the penultimate weekend of the Six Nations were soon aware of the tackle, with conversation quickly turning to just how long the soon-to-be 38-year-old would have to spend kicking his heels in penance.

There was understandably some degree of bemusement when, by the time of the disciplinary hearing, it was revealed that Du Plessis had already served two of the three games he would miss and would be free to play not just on Saturday against Ulster but last weekend against the Dragons had he been selected.

Sent off under Law 9.18 which states: “A player must not lift an opponent off the ground and drop or drive that player so that their head and/or upper body make contact with the ground,” it was found that the tackle, such as it was, constituted an act of foul play. A well-worn phrase involving Sherlock Holmes comes to mind.

Despite the apparent moment of madness, what would have been a six-game ban was halved due to Du Plessis’ behaviour during the disciplinary process and his previous foul play record of just one red card in 374 professional games.

Whatever about whether wearing a nice suit and minding your Ps and Qs should be counted as mitigation for such a singularly dangerous act is one thing; it was the decision on which games constituted the three that were to be missed where things got interesting.

With the Currie Cup and URC again running concurrently, it was decreed that the ban would constitute two games in the former competition and one in the latter, the trio separated by just a week and day.

It is naturally hard for any independent panel to anticipate selection, but it is clearly a stretch to suggest any pro player — not least one in his late thirties — would be expected to play three times in eight days and this is not an isolated incident.

Back in February, Elliot Dee made a return for the Dragons against Ulster when it was judged that Wales’ opening Six Nations games would count toward his own ban despite the fact he had not been named in Wayne Pivac’s squad.

Simply put, given the game’s obvious need to not only be safer but to be seen to embrace the idea of being safer, an eight-day ban for a tackle like Du Plessis’ was just not sufficient. If the league have been hamstrung by the frameworks presently in place then those frameworks are not fit for purpose.