Red mist: Rugby’s leaders would do well to heed wise words of Wayne Barnes

Opinion will always be divided, but a general consensus seems to have it that Wayne Barnes has been the best referee of our times. Now that he has retired, it seems he is feeling freer to speak his mind. The game would do well to pay attention.

He appeared on TNT’s highlights programme for round one of the Champions Cup this month and offered his thoughts on the cards that he and his colleagues have been obliged to bandy about for so many years now.

Related: The Breakdown | Champions Cup emerges from rugby’s recent darkness to offer shafts of light

When asked how often he had shown red cards to players who had clearly not meant to offend in the way they had – to whom he was showing the card because he had to – he stopped short of replying “every time”, but his diplomatic response was clear. “I don’t think any player goes out intentionally to hurt another player,” he said. “I think players get things wrong.”

Another way of putting that is that the game is simply too fast and physical for any player to guarantee they will always get things right. So all we do under the protocols is guarantee we will be sending players off. “The game needs to have that discussion,” Barnes said. “There were 112 cards in the Champions Cup last season. We do need to ask ourselves the question – and this is a nice time to ask it, just after a World Cup – do we constantly want to see teams reduced to 14 or 13 men?”

Poignant words from the man who presided, only a couple of months ago, over the first men’s Rugby World Cup final to feature a red card, in front of a global audience of millions, the year after the first in the women’s equivalent. Sam Cane was the unfortunate scapegoat in the men’s event. But just as poignant is to consider who he is.

By the lottery of split‑second timings and outcomes, his offence was adjudged by the bunker review officer to be upgraded from a yellow card to red, while Siya Kolisi’s in the same match stayed at yellow. It is telling that Cane is the captain of the All Blacks and an openside flanker. Kolisi is the captain of the Springboks and an openside flanker. This means that they are two of the best tacklers the game has seen.

We are all familiar now with the rantings of armchair critics who insist that players will “just have to learn to tackle lower”. If two of the best tacklers the game has seen cannot guarantee they will never catch a player in the head, no one can.

There are apologists who want you to believe this era of the red card began as recently as the 2019 World Cup with the introduction of the “high‑tackle sanction framework”. This was no more than a guideline to help referees to achieve consistency (and help spectators to work out what was going on). Anyway, in 2021 the framework was replaced by the “head‑contact process”. Perhaps we are to believe red cards for high tackles were invented then.

In the real world, the protocol was made official, with far more draconian wording and less room for mitigation than applies now, on 3 January 2017, nearly seven years ago, and the first red card, for Richard Barrington of Saracens, followed that weekend. Unofficially the policy pre‑dated even that. In December 2016 there were nine red cards across two weekends of Europe, when it later transpired referees had been quietly instructed to referee as if the imminent protocols already applied. Meanwhile, the first time the Breakdown discussed the problem of red cards for accidents, instead of for intentional crimes, was April 2015.

So the best players in the world have had at least seven years to learn how to tackle lower. Still the red cards keep coming. And they will never stop, until this persecution is dropped, because none of the offences are intentional, nor are they avoidable.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest players are tackling lower. Gone is the cult of the “big hit”, that chest‑high smash so celebrated by the entire rugby community only 15 or so years ago. It is just not cool any more – and that is without doubt a positive development. It has not made one iota of difference to concussion incidence, nor will it, but the celebration of the big hit was an ugly look for a game supposedly prioritising player welfare.

We did not need to send a single player off to achieve that shift. Education and coaching are the biggest inputs, and an actual law change to back it up would also help, lowering the legal height of a tackle from shoulder height, where it has always remained, to something like the armpit or sternum. The avalanche of penalties that would unleash is preferable to even one more red card for an accident.

Cane sat with his own head in his hands when the news of his red card came through that fateful night, just as Tom Curry (England openside, one of the best tacklers the game has seen, etc, etc) had on the opening weekend of the tournament. What should have been the greatest night of Cane’s life lay in ruins, as did the sport’s credibility in its showpiece event. Lydia Thompson has spoken movingly of how the red card she was shown in the women’s final nearly derailed her.

These are the humans the sport is betraying. Rugby is dangerous at the elite level and never will it not be. Applying retrospective justice after ugly accidents can never work. Referees are not in armchairs. They are at the heart of the action in this dizzyingly fast sport. They can see these players mean no harm, and they do not like having to send them off. May Barnes’s words resonate where it matters.

• This is an extract taken from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To sign up, just visit this page and follow the instructions