The uncertainty surrounding the so-called “tip-tackle” needs to be grabbed, lifted and driven into the turf.
One job I had back in the day was as “surveyor” for a gas company. That may sound like a very lucrative technical position, but all it meant was that I was to go round to the houses of people looking to buy a gas fire supposedly to check the dimensions of their fireplace, when in reality I was simply trying to get them to buy more stuff.
I enjoyed it because it had me driving all around Dublin and also I could work my schedule to suit myself. People were quite easy-going about arranging appointments, in fact most would express surprise when I actually showed up on time.
One day my destination address was the (fictional of course for the purposes of this post) “37 Meadowgreen Avenue”. As I drove up the road, which was quite a busy one traffic-wise, I remember cursing the local house-owners for not having numbers displayed on their doors because I couldn't even find a reference point to at least know I was at the right end of the road to find number 37.
By the way, yes, this post is about rugby.
Then I spy a house with a lawn sign in the front garden, a bit like ones you see around election time. To my amazement it had on it, printed in very big characters, “37 (THIRTY-SEVEN) MEADOWGREEN AVENUE”. It really was like some kind of divine intervention and I had to shake my head a few times to make sure I wasn't seeing things.
So I pull into the driveway and go up to ring the doorbell. The lady of the house answered and as she showed me to the fireplace in question I couldn't help but ask her about the sign. The wannabe comedian in me had me wording my query a bit like this : “Your pizzas must always arrive piping hot thanks to that sign!”
A few seconds later, her reply had me eating a very humble pizza pie.
The reason she had the lawn sign was that her 16-year-old son was a quadriplegic and since her neighbours were too conscious of their privacy to have numbers on their front doors, she wanted to be absolutely sure an ambulance could find the house if the need ever arose, and as it turned out it already had a couple of times since the tragedy occurred.
The tragedy in question was her son being injured in a rugby match. I would have assumed it was a scrum, but she definitely said it was a tackle, albeit without specifying what type it was, and I certainly wasn't going to ask for any more information than she was prepared to give me.
This happened back towards the end of the 90s when rugby had begun its slow creaky transition towards professionalism. A decade and a half later, the game is still trying to get to grips with dangerous tackling.
Recently we had an excellent blog-post from Andy McGeady outlining the way scrums are being over-penalised at the highest levels of the game. It certainly seems to be the case that front rows are being targeted by referees and that the game as a spectacle is suffering as a result.
To play devil's advocate for one moment, one of the reasons the IRB is cracking down on front row treachery is that of safety...in order to ensure scrums are being conducted properly right down to the lowest junior/amateur levels, they need the elite pros to be setting the right example. And as a loosehead prop I had my face mashed into the turf enough times to know how dangerous it can be.
Still, despite these motives, I feel they are being taken too far and it will remain a bug-bear with fans for a while ... the “zero-tolerance instant penalty on first offence” approach can be just as frustrating to all involved as a seemingly endless series of resets.
But when it comes to the phenomenon known in the game as a “tip-tackle” I would hold a very different view – zero-tolerance is the only way to go.
Last weekend in a Super-Rugby match the Queensland Reds full-back Jonathon Lance was binned for lifting the Bulls' lock Grant Hattingh and taking him “beyond the horizontal” before bringing him down. The card was only produced after TMO review, thanks to new experimental laws being tried out in the SANZAR competition this season.
When watched in real time, the tackle looked quite harmless. In fact, the whistle had blown for a knock-on just prior to it so if anything Lance took the foot off the pedal a bit. So when the ref flashed the card I noticed several comments on twitter that “common sense” needed to be applied to the situation. I respectfully disagree.
With the TMO in the equation we now get a chance to see the Laws of the Game properly tested. It wasn't down to the referee's instinct...the incident would not only be reviewed by an official but also the millions of TV viewers. In the case of a tip-tackle, we need to examine the meaning behind the phrase “beyond the horizontal”.
The trick in composing laws is not only in finding where to draw the line but also in finding words to describe it. I'm no physicist but I'd like to think that when you grab a big chap by his waist or below and lift him up in the air, as you follow through your control over him decreases as he reaches and then passes a position horizontal to the ground. From then on a combination of his initial momentum, his body weight and of course gravity take over...his journey to the turf may not be taken out of your hands literally, but it certainly is figuratively.
And as all rugby fans will know, different players have different “centres of gravity” - the lower yours may be, the harder it is to get you down. But when it comes to composing a law surrounding a tip-tackle, if we were to take centre of gravity into account it really would be going into the realms of the ridiculous. So it makes perfect sense that the line in the sand must be the horizontal position.
But what of the seemingly harmless nature of a tackle that isn't really carried out with any pure force? In the case of Hattingh there was never going to be any serious injury resulting from the tackle on him.
Again we need to appreciate what we're doing with these laws. We're not simply trying to come up with a way of identifying and punishing the offence. We're trying to get into the head of the would-be tackler BEFORE he or she steps on to the pitch. And by strictly applying the laws at the highest level, we're not just getting into the professional's head, we're also trying to influence all the players watching him as well.
So in many ways it is similar to drink driving, where the safety implications are too great not to do everything we can to stop anyone even considering getting behind the wheel after a pint or two.
In a Leinster School Senior Cup semifinal this season, a Blackrock College player, under 18 of course, was red-carded for a tip-tackle, and absolutely rightly so. We must try to prevent it happening at any level, though of course they are even the more dangerous as you go down the through the rugby levels as the players aren't as physically prepared for such contact with the ground as professionals.
That incident actually involved another aspect that needs to be brought into the equation...what do we do when a perpetrator of a tip-tackle is on OUR team? Like the example above for me, we can certainly all remember individual incidents that involved our players…be it Warburton on Clerc, Ferris on Evans, Tuilagi on Care in the photo, Moriarty on McGrath at Under 20 level, or the one that inspired this piece, De Luca on Grabham…we’ve all seen it done by “our guys”.
We all know about the need to question a ref who rules against at all levels of the game, it's a part of the sport – just last Saturday I was but a few metres away from Nigel Owens shouting “how many is THAT, Nigel?” when he awarded another breakdown penalty against the Glasgow Warriors.
But there are some areas where it is we - the team-mates, coaching staff and fans – who must be the ones showing the “common sense”. When it is clear a tackled player has been brought beyond the horizontal we need to get fully behind the officials – it's for a reason.
Whatever about the legal technicalities that led to De Luca’s 13-week ban being reduced, it dismayed me. I’m not saying there shouldn’t have been an appeal but for me a headline reading “Appeal of ban for tip-tackle is rejected” would have been better for the greater good of the game.
Don’t get me wrong…the so-called “bone-crunching” tackles we see on RugbyDump & YouTube are a great feature of the game for sure, we've all seen & enjoyed the highlight reels.
But I may not be a professional rugby player, a law-maker, a spinal surgeon or a physicist...nonetheless, I most certainly am a father. I want nothing more than to see my kids enjoying sports safely, and if Blackrock College playing a match with 14 men, Leinster having a key player banned for several weeks or even Ireland being denied a Grand Slam is the price that must be paid to help ensure that, then so be it. JLP
