This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with Ireland and Ulster tighthead prop Tom O’Toole’s ban and the forthcoming law trials…

Hang on…

Readers of Loose Pass will – hopefully – have noted that this column is not a fan of many a new contact regulation or sanction at the moment.

Red cards are frequently given for accidents, tacklers are being scapegoated for being in the way of those bums-on-seats attracting try-scoring heroes, pernickety TMOs are breaking up the flow of play (such as that ridiculous decision to review a collision during the Northampton v Bath match on Sunday), players are starting to milk certain situations as a result. Technicalities are now being bent so that players can get away with poor and dangerous contact techniques by ticking certain technical boxes.

There’s plenty of fan ire about, mostly reserved for the officials; it’s still pretty easy to see what’s dirty foul play and what is an accident after all. At the moment we get red cards for both.

But the O’Toole incident does not stand up well to scrutiny, despite the dissent among many observers. It also bears a fascinating comparison to the Jordie Barrett clearout a couple of weeks ago, which went unpunished on the field but saw the Leinster centre vilified in the aftermath. O’Toole, now cooling his heels for six weeks as a result of his clearout of Alex Nankivell, has received more support than ire.

Are the two incidents so different? Both O’Toole and Barrett come in from the side, both ‘alongside’ the last man at the ruck but both clearing across the ruck at an angle. Both have head above hips despite their overall movement, in the words of Amy Theron-Barrett last week, being more that of a plane landing than that of one taking off.

Both bind with one arm; Barrett binds with his outside arm and tucks his inside arm into the contact while the Ulster prop binds with his inside arm and flaps unconvincingly with his outside one. This, we reckon, makes a difference in the TMO perceptions. Barrett’s bind was at least something effective, akin to the bind of someone at least trying to clear out properly, even if the tucked arm was unmistakable.

O’Toole’s ‘bind’ is poor at best. Over his opponent’s back, it serves no real purpose. The contact between that binding arm and Nankivell’s back is almost entirely redundant. All of the active contact in the clearout is from O’Toole’s torso onto Nankivell’s knee, which is injured as a result. It’s clearly dangerous and deserved sanction.

“But should red cards be given for accidents?” cry the masses. After all, O’Toole hardly targeted Nankivell’s knee. Not for accidents no, but if your technique is lazy and poor and high danger or injury arises as a result, there’s no option. Tacklers perhaps get some mitigation as they are not always the active weight in contact, but a ruck cleaner has a clear duty, as the active moving part in that moment, to get the technique right or suffer the consequences.

This call the officials got right.

Law trial interest

Four new laws enter the fray in the Champions Cup this weekend, two of them excellent initiatives to speed the game up and stop the tiresome time-usage by goal-kickers at chip shots, or stop teams ambling unhurriedly to set-pieces while sitting on a narrow lead.

But we’re not sure about the other two. Austin Healey has been unequivocal about the new law that stops an opposing scrum-half harrying his opposite number at scrum-time; his arguments are flawless.

And this one about crooked line-out throws going unpunished if the other team doesn’t contest… really?

Both those laws remove one of the essences of individual player profiles: for the scrum-half, the ability to pass well off the base with someone breathing down your neck, while for the thrower (it doesn’t HAVE to be a hooker), the ability to marshal tired or bruised muscles and co-ordinate them to chuck a ball straight down a 2m wide channel to a maximum of 20-25m in length.

Throwers won’t know for sure if an opponent plans to contest or not. There’s not much advantage to be had there. But will opponents stand ready to lift and decide whether or not to do so if they see a throw going astray? We don’t think it will be long before the potential of such reaction is looked at.

Either way, those two laws seem to reduce the contest and reward the mediocre respectively, which is not what we’d like new laws to do.