THE BIG TALKING point from South Africa’s narrow win over Argentina last weekend was an incident that left Springboks scrum-half Grant Williams knocked out cold.
Argentina fullback Juan Cruz Mallía blocked down Williams’ kick after just 10 seconds of the game but then collided with the South African player’s head, resulting in Williams being forced off with concussion.
Irish referee Andrew Brace decided it was a ‘rugby incident’ and didn’t sanction Mallía, but the Pumas player was cited for the challenge after the game, as discussed by Murray Kinsella and Eoin Toolan on today’s Rugby Weekly Extra, a podcast for subscribers to The 42.
There has been heated debate about the incident but as the wait continues for an announcement from the disciplinary process, former Ireland performance analyst Eoin Toolan said he understands why Brace didn’t penalise the Argentinian.
Toolan: “I side with Brace completely. I thought Mallía effected the charge down. I don’t see where he can go once he’s got off the ground to get into the path of the ball.
“As he’s rotating, he catches the scrum-half but for me, it is a rugby incident. If there’s a ban to come off the back of this, it really jeopardises Brace and the TMO. They’ve had a chance to look at it, they don’t think it’s even a yellow card, and how many times have we talked about the lack of alignment between citing officers and them feeling there is a case?
“It genuinely felt like Mallía was trying to make a charge down, does so, and in the act of charging the ball down, he makes contact with the nine but I don’t see where else he could have positioned himself.”
Kinsella: “To play devil’s advocate, maybe he just shouldn’t jump if that’s the outcome. Is that fair?”
Toolan: “But then you’re taking more and more competition out of the game. You want to be able to compete at every moment whether it’s the breakdown, charge downs, and unfortunately these types of things can happen.
“Put it another way, if you make a massive hit on someone, knock them backwards, their head hits the ground and they knock themselves out, but you’ve been technically perfect in the collision, it’s a huge impact, what’s the difference? You’re in a moment of competing.
“Charge downs are a legitimate part of the game. If we’re saying that’s too dangerous, then let’s stop the contest in the air, let’s stop people competing for high ball catches.
“There has to be a level of competition in the game and fortunately, these incidents are not regular by any means. I think if we stop the competition, what does the game become?”
Kinsella: “What is regular is actually people jumping to try and block kicks. Usually, they don’t collide with any part of the kicker’s body and very rarely they collide with their head.
“People think of the CJ Stander one when he didn’t get a block on the ball but it was a similar situation.
“I think if Mallía gets banned for this, then they should actually tweak the law to say you can’t jump to block a kick in case you collide with the kicker’s head. That might sound wordy but if they ban him, that’s what they’re saying – don’t jump if you think there’s any risk of hitting his head. If that is the way it goes, then I’d support it.
“Anyone who listens to this pod knows we don’t want head injury in the game, we want player safety to be paramount, but players need to be able to try and block kicks as well.
“It’s horrific what happened to Grant Williams but I can also see it from the match officials’ point of view.
“They’re different scenarios obviously but I have similar feelings about this to the Freddie Steward incident. I felt really awful for Hugo Keenan then and Williams in this case but unfortunately sometimes these things do happen in rugby. We’ve almost lost a little bit of sight of that because of the brilliant focus on doing as much as we can with head injury.
“But rugby is a really dangerous game and unfortunately, sometimes these things happen. It doesn’t say in the laws of the game that you can’t jump to block down, you are entitled to do it.”
Toolan: “The ones that I would have issue with is where there’s not an attempt to charge down the ball, just a jump in the air with a rotation when you’re not able to sight the other player.
“If there’s no attempt to actually charge down when you jump, that’s definitely a viable yellow or red card. For me, there has to be an attempt to charge the ball down. In this example, there’s a legitimate attempt to charge the ball. What happens next is unfortunate but not foul play.”
On today’s pod, Toolan and Kinsella also broke down New Zealand’s latest win after they clinched the Rugby Championship against Australia, as well as discussing South Africa’s stuttering performance against the Pumas.
The lads spoke about Scotland’s win over Italy last weekend, while also looking forward to Ireland’s first World Cup warm-up game against Italy this Saturday in Dublin.
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