When was the last time you watched a rugby game without a yellow card? And how long do you spend wondering whether the card was really deserved or necessary? Robin Davey says the game is in danger of losing much of its confrontational edge and becoming no different to the touch rugby played in parks on summer evenings.

 

 

Rugby union is forever evolving, but as we close in on a new year so the game is entering a dramatic new phase – yellow peril.

After a series of incidents involving player concussions, leading referees have been issued with new directives and the result is a sharp rise in the number of yellow cards being handed out.

Many leading lights and everyday fans have become increasingly disillusioned with the game, claiming it’s not the sport they used to know as it’s changed so much.

Obviously, player safety is paramount. But we now have the collision-in-the-air regulation whereby any form of contact with a player going up for a high ball is virtually outlawed; tackling a player anywhere near the neck area is punished even if the tackle did start around the chest and the player may have dipped into it; a tackle deemed to be made without using arms is also dead against the rules. And so it goes on.

All this comes on top of major changes to the scrum laws when instead of being a real challenge for the ball it often goes on for an eternity, collapse following collapse and engagement not allowed until the referee has completed the laborious ‘crouch, bind, set’ clarion call.

We have virtually been promised an increase in the number of yellow cards, mainly because of growing fears surrounding the concussion issue.

Dr Barry O’Driscoll resigned from World Rugby, then called the IRB, in 2012 because he felt concussion safety protocols were being ignored. More recently he has spoken out over the George North controversy, claiming the decision by the Northampton medics to allow him back onto the field after another heavy blow to the head was wrong. He has since accused the assessment of being tokenism.

All of this has led a series of respected figures in rugby to question just where the game is heading.

“If that’s the way the game is going, I just couldn’t play it now,” said Newport Gwent Dragons chief Kingsley Jones while his Cardiff Blues counterpart Danny Wilson warned, “We’ve got to be careful the game isn’t ruined.”

And Matthew Watkins, the former Wales, Newport and Llanelli centre, weighed in, “Rugby is becoming a complete joke. Let’s all play touch rugby.”

That is precisely the feeling of Dai Young, currently enjoying a great run as Wasps chief, while experienced Leicester boss Richard Cockerill, among others, has expressed similar fears.

No-one wants to go back to the skullduggery of the Seventies era (or do they?) when it was so often a free-for-all.

Pontypool legend Ray Prosser and his feared Pooler eight loved to use the scrum as a weapon – a bit like the Charge of the Light Brigade as they literally tore into the other pack. How ‘Pross’ must lament the de-powering of the scrum.

That wonderful after-dinner speaker Mike Burton has had many an audience in fits about preparing to confront the mighty Pooler eight on a wet, windy night at Pontypool Park. But clubs like Cardiff and London Welsh either threatened to cancel fixtures or did so because of the violence.

One of the many Bobby Windsor stories reveals what it was like in those days, and not confined to Wales by any means.

French packs at the time were even more frightening, boasting the likes of Paparemborde, Paco, Cholley, Palmie and Imbernon.

Not long after a bearded giant by the name of Alain Esteve arrived on the scene, breathing fire at lock.

Windsor takes up the story of one encounter when Wales met France at Parc des Princes.

“I was getting slaughtered in the scrums, Esteve was throwing the punches through and I couldn’t do anything about it because my arms were around my two props,” he recalls.

“So I said to Charlie (Faulkner, the equally legendary prop) we’ve got to do something about this or I’m dead meat. Next time he goes down we’ve got to give him a right booting to shut him up.”

Sure enough, down went Esteve again and the pair of them lashed into him, certain that would be the end of him as a threat. But far from it. “I couldn’t believe it when he got up and he gave me a big wink and said, ‘Boooby, next time I get you!’ Windsor lamented.

“So I turned to Charlie and said ‘Did you hear that, I’m for it this time, what are we gonna do now?” Faulkner replied quick-as-a-flash, “Tell him he’s wanted on the telephone!!”

Those days are long gone of course, a relic of the distant past never to be repeated. But many are complaining we’ve gone too much the other way, the game now a nightmare resembling touch rugby more and more.

We’re almost into 2017 and it has to be said the game is truly at a crossroads.