Ireland v England Grand Slam Decider 2023

What a great weekend. Two Grand Slams!

As the dust settles I don't think we could have had a better outcome for the senior team.

A nervous but ultimately convincing win with work to do now over the summer.

Worst outcome for me would have been a French like trouncing of England.

It would not have done us any favours long term satisfying as it might have been.

Enjoy the celebrations lads, well deserved and get back to work soon!

Accidental dangerous hits in tackling or rucking do happen. But they are rare enough. By that I mean head contact with a hip or knee. The desire is to make the game of rugby as safe as possible.

Great win. Unbelievable achievement. The red was the correct call but unfortunate in the context of the game. Players will take time to learn what they can and cannot do in advance of particular scenarios. I hope Keenan is ok because he has been outstanding and brave.

Fair play to England for turning up and they will not be a pushover in the WC.

And well done to the U20s. Got a bit hairy in the end but they nailed it when they needed to.

Never drinking again....

Now that is a good point which I hadn't looked into before. It makes sense (seems kinda obvious now! Duh!).

20 minute red card is a pretty significant backward step. It's tantamount to saying that red cards are ruining the game and having 15 v 15 is more important than player welfare. Effectively they have conceded on the determination to address the issue of head shots in as meaningful a way as possible.

Your analysis is correct. With the newer interpretations of red card offences the number of players entering contact head down is decreasing, but it still coached as an effective way of involving as many opposition tackler in order to 'create' space elsewhere.

Ireland prosper with a 'heads up' approach creating (as the SH call it) Lightning fast ball. Other sides are struggling to implement this strategy. These sides are the ones conceding red & yellow cards. As per Aloofs post says, fewer cards conceded = fewer games lost.

But stating that removing tackling from the game is logical is reductio ad absurdum

It's not "England" though. It's coaching and players. And it's in France too.

ROG on the radio a few weeks back (paraphrasing here) saying there are a number of ways to tackle (or hit a player), and that the high shot is beneficial/the right one in some instances. So it's a risk they are willing to take. It's not being coached out of the game. And it's less likely to be if we go this absurd 20 minute red route.

ROG comment was in the context of the Atonio yellow/red on Herring. He was basically saying that in this scenario the method he used would have been a coached/approved approach given that scenario and he takes his chances (with his and someone else's brain) by going for a high/dominant hit to stop the player in their tracks.

If we introduce 20 minute reds it's obvious and inevitable we see more risk taking with peoples' health.

I wonder if it would be more meaningful to move the punishment for an offense post game.

We are seeing a lot of red cards with a week or two of suspension. What if 6 weeks (after everything, mitigation, remorse, record) was a low end ban.

And the 20 minute red isn't exactly going to help.

Would u be saying that if some front row takes Johnny Sexton out in the first few mins of the RWC quarter final? Small price to pay, 15 players for 70% of the game.....why not?

It's giving license to players to up their appetite for risk taking given the penalty is lower.

This Is a retrograde step. It is not with players safety in mind. It's a reaction to players and coaches not adapting to a measure that has player safety in mind. It's smacks of spineless leadership.

Not sure he had enough time tbh. These clips are taken from the Virgin TV tweet where they discussed it at half time. You can see the video timer shows 15 seconds in from the first to the last. And that was in slo-mo. From the first one, you can see Steward has a realistic chance of getting to the ball depending on the bounce. In the second, it looks like he's shaping to kick it. In the third, he realises Keenan is about to take possession and starts to abort the kick (if that's what he was attempting). He completely stops on his planted right foot which swings his hips and the rest of his body in that direction. There's very little time from when Keenan takes possession and the collision.

One way of looking at this is as a rugby incident and accidental contact. Another is, as Shaggy said, he had a duty of care to Keenan and should have aborted the move earlier. It's really hard to know without knowing exactly what his intention was. But it didn't look to me that he was attempting a tackle. Good luck to the disciplinary panel sorting that out.

Yes. That's true. But the original contention from Peyper apparently was that he should have turned sideways. Which he seems to have tried to do. This is what I was addressing via the post from @[Deleted User] replying to @q2ice