The South Africa red card offence everyone missed against Australia
Seeing as Marika Koroibete’s suspect tackle on Makazole Mapimpi has been talked about endlessly this week in the rugby world, and mainly by Bok fans, it is only right that maybe an even worse tackle by a South African should be brought to everyone’s attention in the name of making the game safer.
While even Rassie Erasmus even looks to have jumped on the bandwagon of calling out Koroibete in the wake of South Africa’s loss, he has surprisingly been quiet on a tackle by Lood de Jager early in the match which looked to be clear head on head contact with Wallabies centre Hunter Paisami.
Now head on head collisions are something that splits rugby fans, with many saying that they are a byproduct of mistiming a tackle and are not necessarily a red card. While it is true that no player intends to head butt another player in a tackle (the majority of the time), the reality is that it is a red card in the modern game, as many players have seen so far this year. In fact, Andrew Porter’s yellow card against the All Blacks in July was actually controversial because it was not a red card. With that in mind, it is hard to argue that this tackle in Adelaide would not have been a red card if it was flagged by the officials. Maybe Paisami’s ability to ride the tackle helped de Jager out quite a bit.
Take a look at the tackle:
We know how vigilant Saffers (and their agents) on here are about tackle technique.
Very strange, then, we haven’t had the full still-image, multi-GIF, frame-by-frame treatment of this ‘sickening’ Lood De Jager tackle vs. Australia.@BrendenNel @mark_keohane @timoconnorbl pic.twitter.com/YTwfa3wayY
— Stephen Wall (@StephenWall1985) August 31, 2022
South Africa fans have felt pretty aggrieved this week with the referee’s decision making in their round three encounter, particularly regarding the Koroibete tackle and Faf de Klerk’s strange yellow card, but they were certainly the lucky ones on this occasion, and so early in the match. Both players are fighting fit for the rematch in Sydney this Saturday.
