Sanzaar's 20-minute red card push heading for crucial World Rugby vote

Wednesday, 13 March 2024

• Global trial recommendation for a 20-minute red card will go to World Rugby council.

• France is said to have reservations.

• Red card recipients could cop longer off-field bans.

Sanzaar’s drive to see the 20-minute red card introduced across the international game has made progress, although there are still hurdles to be cleared.

Sanzaar chief executive Brendan Morris attended the recent World Rugby “Shape of the Game” forum in London, and told Stuff that the proposal had been recommended for a vote at a World Rugby council meeting in May.

If successful, and the council vote needs to be a 75% majority, the proposal would be advanced to a global trial, which is the first step to it becoming law.

However, there is still some reticence from the Six Nations competition, with Stuff told by two sources that France had reservations.

The ongoing concussion class action in England is also another factor, but Sanzaar is highly motivated to push the change.

“The [Shape of the Game] workshop made some recommendations, one of which was that the 20-minute red card would go to a global trial,” said the Sydney-based Morris.

“In the short term, the Six Nations bloc came back to us and said, ‘Well, we’d prefer to go to a closed trial and trial it and then come back and have another look’.

“But where we ended up is that the recommendation through to World Rugby's council meeting on May 9 is that we're looking to go to a global trial.

“For that to be accepted, you've got to get a 75% majority vote of the voting members of council.”

The 20-minute red card has been used in a closed trial in Super Rugby since 2020, and introduced into the Rugby Championship in 2021, although it wasn’t used last year to make it consistent with the rules that teams would encounter at the Rugby World Cup.

Cognisant of the player welfare implications, Morris said that if the 20-minute proposal made it into law it could be accompanied by a tougher off-field sanctioning regime.

“When I go back to the whole-of-the-game narrative, the introduction of the 20-minute cards is not going backwards, but it's about getting everything on-field and off-field aligned,” he said.

“The sanctions off-field may to go up a little bit to make it more a deterrent.“

In practical terms it could mean players such as Jordie Barrett, who was shown a red card against the Reds, being replaced by another player after 20 minutes, but copping a longer ban than the one handed down to him last week.

Barrett’s offence started at a six-week ban, but he might only miss two games due to “mitigating factors” and a further one-week reduction for attending a World Rugby “tackle school” course.

Morris said that southern hemisphere fans had told Sanzaar loud and clear they opposed 80-minute red cards, especially as a number of them were due to technique and timing issues in the tackle, rather than dirty play.

“Look, it's no secret that we've been driving this pretty hard,” Morris said.

'…The game really needs a reset and there's a broad acknowledgment around that.

“The biggest issue I think that we've got in the game at the moment is we've got to get the balance between safety and spectacle.

“And I'm happy for you to use those words because we were very clear about what we wanted up there [in London].

“It's not about one overriding the other, it’s about having a balanced approach to the game.

“Player welfare is still our number one priority. However, we've got to start looking at this game with a fan-obsessed lens.

'We're in the entertainment business and we're not just competing against the NRL and AFL, we're competing against Netflix and Taylor Swift, and the beach and the movies.

“We've got to be more open-minded about what do they [supporters] want from the game?

“And they're telling us that 15 on 15 is really important for them.”

Is Sanzaar’s drive to see the 20-minute red card the right one? Let us know in the comments.

Correction: In the example of Jordie Barrett’s red card, he would be replaced by another player after 20 minutes rather than being allowed to return to the field. (Updated: 11:55pm, March 13, 2004).