RUGBY: Jon Swift
THE shambolic machinations of the disciplinary procedures evident throughout the Super 12 this past week have all the hallmarks of a South African Everest expedition.
Queensland Reds winger Damian Smith is sent off against New South Wales for two dangerous head-high tackles, and less than a week later appears without sanction against the Brumbies of Australian Capital Territory. It was an act of cynicism by the Aussie disciplinary authorities which almost defies understanding.
It would be laughable if the long-term consequences were not so potentially damaging to the game. It is also an indication of the reticence with which rugby’s ruling blue-noses embraced the inescapable fact that professionalism had to happen. They have taken this self-same reticence and an in-built, antiquated amateurism into the professional era. And it shows.
Simply put, there should be a mechanism firmly in place which both quantifies and qualifies offences deemed serious enough by the referee to merit a sending-off. If the players knew, and were contractually bound to, a system which, for example, demanded a minimum two-week ban for the use of a fist, double that for a boot and a sentence to be determined by a properly convened tribunal for anything more serious, the ill-feeling and confusion would be cut to the minimum.
The key to this, though, would be a clause in the contract of every professional player laying out the penalties. As professionals, earning their living from the game, they would have the option of either accepting their medicine or resorting to the courts. And make no mistake, with the money on offer for top players in the professional era, there will soon be a breed of lawyers who feed on such appeals.
There has also been the case this week of the citing of Charles Rossouw. The way this issue was handled had all the attributes of low farce, and the South African Rugby Football Union has probably prevented yet another horse from bolting by introducing a proper system for this procedure.
Rossouw’s case involved a televised thumping of Northern Transvaal lock Johan Ackermann. It was there for all to see, and Sarfu’s citing commissioner Willie Venter did so on his TV set at home. That’s where it all went horribly wrong. The channels of communication degenerated into a muddy morass of faxes and counter faxes, the wrong man — Transvaal prop Ian Hattingh — was named as the cited player and ultimately Rossouw got off because the deadline for the citing was missed.
Rossouw is well within his rights. He didn’t make the rules. Neither, for that matter, did Damian Smith. Come to think of it, did anyone seriously consider those rules before the Super 12 was rushed into life.
Sarfu has, belatedly perhaps, done the right thing by installing a dedicated citings official at each match venue to view material for potential citings immediately after the game and make a decision there and then.
It is a start. But the whole system of citing is open to a debate which is destined to come before the law sooner or later. At issue is one simple thing: television is a selective medium, concentrating largely on the movement with the ball and often on only a small area of that movement.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that video footage of action off the ball — such as Johan le Roux’s infamous bite on Sean Fitzpatrick — is not always there as evidence.
But perhaps, just perhaps, the procedures Sarfu have put into action will have the right effect. Somehow though, one cannot escape the thought that officials worldwide should have weighed all the options a long time ago.