Scotland will decide on Thursday whether to appeal against the three-match bans that World Rugby has handed down to two of their key forwards, Ross Ford and Jonny Gray. The loss of the pair severely compromises Scotland’s already limited chances in Sunday’s World Cup quarter-final against Australia. The management are considering the position, no doubt studying all available footage of the incident midway through the second half of last Saturday’s game against Samoa, when Ford and Gray are deemed to have illegally lifted Jack Lam at a ruck.
Opinion, meanwhile, is raging against the latest inconsistency from World Rugby’s disciplinary officers. Kenny Logan, the former Scotland wing, described the sentences as a “sick joke”; Peter Wright, the former prop who sits on Scotland’s disciplinary panel, complained that when it comes to World Rugby’s decision-making, “common sense does not seem to come into it”.
The Scotland players were clearly bristling over the decision at their training base in Guildford. “When I heard,” said the back-row Josh Strauss, “I was angry for [Ford and Gray]. I imagined myself in their shoes and how I would feel if it was me. But that is good as it motivates me, and, if selected, I want to put in a performance for them and make them proud, because they’ve made all of us proud. We feel it is tough on them.”
For all the split-second innocuousness of the incident, less dangerous than others at this World Cup glossed over with lesser sentences – and sometimes none at all – the Scots are up against it. World Rugby has long crusaded against the lifting of a player beyond the horizontal. Wright conceded the best Scotland could hope for is a reduction in the sentence. It is unlikely that either man will be available for the quarter-final at Twickenham.
Which sticks in the craw of many.
A sense of injustice has been swelling throughout this World Cup over perceived inconsistencies in citing and sentencing outcomes. Australia’s Michael Hooper, for example, will be available for the quarter-final, having served a mere one-week ban for launching himself at the head of Mike Brown off a 10-yard run-up. In that context, the punishment meted out to Ford and Gray does indeed seem ridiculously harsh. To posit a conspiracy against the lesser nations at this World Cup (Ford and Gray were cited by an Australian officer)is too much, but the impression that World Rugby’s disciplinary policy has deteriorated into scattergun incoherence grows more and more powerful.
As ever, it is the players who suffer, scarcely able to go about their necessarily vigorous, and occasionally dangerous, business without landing themselves in some sort of trouble. “It is difficult from our point of view,” said Dave Denton, the Scotland No8 now providing cover for the two remaining locks in their squad, “because, for us, we’ve got a split second to make a decision that could have ramifications for the next three weeks.”
Directives come thick and fast from World Rugby, crackdowns on various offences go in and out of fashion, as the latest perceived threats to rugby’s popular image are identified and processed. “We all just try to do the right thing,” said Tim Swinson, who will replace Gray in the second row, “and we often get told afterwards that we didn’t by a citing officer. But we just have to deal with that.”
Michael Cheika, Australia’s coach, sympathises with players and officials. “You feel for the players, but they are very clear – referees and authorities – about the focus points for them from way out. Not just the tournament. They sent us the things they will be focusing on, neck rolls, tip-tackles. Everyone knows it. Tip-tackles often aren’t intentional. That’s just the way it is.”
Players nowadays, then, can miss out on the biggest games of their careers because of the unintentional, the inevitable accidents of their trade. It is no wonder there is so much anger. All the more so when the lesser nations seem to suffer the heaviest sanctions. “I guess sometimes it does feel like that,” said Denton. “But we can’t be sitting here feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ve got a huge match to win on the weekend.”
