Australian rugby player Wycliff Palu got a yellow card in a match this week for a hard tackle on Ireland's Robert Kearney, and the hit -- and penalty -- have been a major source of contention among rugby fans.
Most fans seem to agree that it was a hard, brutal -- but legal -- hit, and that Palu didn't deserve his time in the "sin bin." But the international rugby community -- much like the NFL -- is increasingly attempting to take the hardest, most dangerous hits out of its sport. TheAustralian.com reports:
The issue of illegal tackles was highlighted at the annual IRB high performance referee conference in London in the week leading up to the Wallabies-Ireland Test.The interesting thing from an American perspective is that compared to what we're used to seeing in American football, that hit really doesn't look all that rough. As much as Europeans like to joke that American football players are sissies because they put on body armor before playing a contact sport, the truth is just the opposite: Football helmets allow players to hit each other much harder than rugby players hit each other.
The world's top referees and referee managers expressed a commitment to stricter policing of illegal tackles in open play and at the ruck.
When referees and their managers focus their attention on a particular infringement, they tend to find it.
There only had to be a hint of an illegal tackle to send Kaplan reaching into his pocket for a yellow card.
The Wall Street Journal has suggested that helmets ought to be eliminated from American football in order to make the game safer. If the hit Palu put on Kearney is as hard as it gets in rugby, that sounds like a good idea.
