On Sunday, the French medic who stood his ground and insisted that Anthony Jelonch leave the field for a head injury assessment after his early clash with Grant Gilchrist showed the true caring spirit of rugby union. Sadly I do not know his name and it appears to be a state secret in France – I contacted the FFR but got no reply - but sir, I salute you.
Had the doctor not done so, the likelihood is that Jelonch would have played on, the lineout would have been taken and Gilchrist would have escaped the red card. Yet in facing up to the challenge of a player not wanting to go off, the medic did the right thing and insisted on telling referee Nika Amashukeli that Jelonch needed an HIA.
In doing so he gave the TMO the chance to draw the referee’s attention to Gilchrist’s offence but that was not why he intervened, he genuinely thought Jelonch should be assessed – that the French flanker passed the HIA is immaterial, he needed to be assessed and the medic made sure that happened. Jelonch probably wishes he had failed the HIA because he had to leave the field a few minutes later with a very serious knee injury.
Jelonch’s father has let rip big style in the French press to say his son should not have been allowed back on, but that’s hindsight talking. I do feel for Jelonch and his family, however. He is a great player and the injury, subsequently confirmed as a torn anterior crucial ligament – having suffered one myself I can assure you it’s a complete nightmare – means he may even miss the World Cup.
It’s a pity that Gilchrist had to go off, and I felt he was a tad unlucky as Matt Fagerson should have tackled Jelonch out of his road, but the fact is that if your tackling technique is poor – I’ll come back to that - as was Gilchrist’s on this occasion, there is always the chance that you will make contact with an opponent’s head and that risks a red card every time. Gregor Townsend said as much after the game.
I know that 30 years ago it would not even have merited a penalty, but we are all so much wiser about head injuries now, aren’t we? We have to be very serious about head hits. The huge problems that are coming the way of the rugby authorities are the least of it – people are suffering brain trauma now.
To those who argue that red cards for head hits are wrong, well do us all a favour and just crawl down a rabbit hole and not re-emerge for a decade.
As for Mohamed Haouas, the French prop’s flying headbutt on Ben White was a red card all day long. It was nothing other than a common assault, and had he done it in the street outside the Stade de France he would have been going to jail. Haouas, a known hothead, obviously had a temporary loss of his sensibility in doing what he did, but there is no excuse, no mitigation, for a deliberate blow to an opponent’s head and there shouldn’t have been even a moment of doubt once the replays showed what he did – and given his previous record I echo the calls for him to get a lengthy ban for his offence. The Georgian referee eventually got that decision right, but it was only thanks to his assistants Karl Dickson and Andrea Piardi standing their ground and insisting that Haouas’s foul play merited a red card.
Our sport has really gotten itself in a nasty fankle over the issue of head injuries. Regular readers may recall that having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, possibly because of concussions sustained while playing rugby more than 30 years ago, I am even more determined to see tough action taken against head hits.
Talking to friends about the double red card on Sunday, all of us could easily see what the real trouble is. Leaving aside that nutter – literally - Hoaouas, the plethora of red cards in recent months has been down largely to poor tackling technique. Gilchrist, for example, should have realised that he was the second tackler and therefore should have gone in low on Jelonch.
Standing up to a charging player torso -to-torso and failing to use your arms to wrap around an opponent is just basically wrong technique.
Gilchrist and Haouas will get bans, but I feel that World Rugby should try another tack. Rather than long bans, why not decree that players sent off for tackling mistakes should undergo specialist training by tackle experts and be certificated as competent before they can return to playing.
The best tackler I ever saw in a Scottish jersey was Alan Tait. His technique was non pareil, and he would be an ideal man to superintend a new system of coaching poor tacklers.
Deal with the cause of the problem, and soon there will be no problem.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here