Revisión de Whistle Watch de Owens sobre Pharrell Redd

El árbitro centurión retirado Nigel Owens aborda la reciente tarjeta roja de Owen Farrell en la última edición de Whistle Watch.

Una reseña semanal producida por World Rugby La semana pasada hubo algunas críticas si evitó mencionar el incidente del 12 de agosto en Twickenham, en el que el capitán de Inglaterra recibió una tarjeta roja a través del búnker TMO después de una infracción que inicialmente le costó una tarjeta amarilla.

Cuando Farrell fue enviado al contenedor de pecado, el árbitro Nika Amashukeli explicó que la entrada al galés Dane Basham sería revisada en el búnker de TMO.

This resulted in Farrell attending a virtually-held independent disciplinary hearing three days later where the red card was rescinded and the England out-half was freed to play on with immediate effect.

World Rugby appealed this decision and only now, after it emerged on Tuesday evening that Farrell must serve a four-match ban, has the Whistle Watch programme fronted by Owens given its review of the tackle on Basham.

“I’m sure a lot of you tuned in last week to hear what the review on the Farrell red card was,” began the Welshman. “Because of the judicial process, we don’t explain our views on it to be fair to everyone involved. But let us cover exactly what had happened and I want you to take away all the emotion.

“What you look at is, is their foul play? Yes, we have foul play and the foul play is leading with the shoulder. The arm is down by the side, so the arm is not ready to make that legal tackle, that wrap.

“If the arm is here ready (Owens holds his arms up in wrap position) and the shoulder makes contact first and we have an illegal tackle, then we only look at the height of the tackle and then we bring the mitigation to it.

“But we have an illegal action so the shoulder is leading, the arm is down here and we have contact direct to the head, so we have foul play and a high degree of danger.

“Do we then have any mitigation? I explained to you, no, we don’t because the action is always illegal, so mitigation does not play a part in the referee’s decision-making process.

“What the referee looks at here, as you saw in the game, is he decided this had reached the yellow card threshold and was thinking this could be more.

“So it goes to the bunker and the bunker reviews it and because of yes, we have foul play, yes, we have direct contact to the head, yes, we have a high degree of danger, we have no mitigation, therefore it is upgraded to a red card.”

Having been stood down from playing against Ireland last Saturday ahead of the appeal, that Summer Nations Series fixture was counted as the first of the four England games that the Farrell ban covers.

He will also miss this Saturday’s final August warm-up versus Fiji as well as the opening two England matches at the Rugby World Cup, the September 9 clash versus Argentina in Marseille and the September 17 meeting with Japan in Nice.