There's been a lot of talk recently about the lengths of bans handed out to player. Brive's Axel Muller's and the horrendous appalling head-high tackle that only resulted in a five-week ban is the obvious one that has got people talking.
For me, it's only served to highlight the problems within the game right now when it comes to red cards and the citing process. When you look at referee's red card decisions, whether you agree with them or not, you can see that they are pretty consistent across the board.
To a degree, there's an inconsistency sometimes, but the biggest inconsistency is in the citing procedure and the bans handed out afterwards. I think the problem is you have too many people involved in the process, some of which have not been players or referees themselves at the highest level.
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Not that you have to be, of course, but I think it does help when it comes to understanding the speed of the game and the dynamics of why things happen. The more people you have involved, the more different opinions you'll have.
The biggest issue right now is the inconsistency of what is cited and what isn't. There's too many people involved in the citing process and when you have that, opinions can vary.
What you need is a much narrower field of citing commissioners. Whether that's people employed to look at the whole professional game or not across the world, I'm not sure. But I feel they need to look at that and get a smaller group to help build consistency in interpretation.
People have been questioning whether a 20-minute red card is the way forward. Well, going back to that Brive player, under no circumstances should he be replaced because that is sending out the wrong message to both teams.
Why should the team that has played within the laws and not committed acts of foul play be punished? It was a needless act of thuggery, recklessness and foul play.
There was no redeeming moment of that act and the team shouldn't be allowed to bring someone back on for an action like that. If so, what's the incentive to stop things like that?
The same goes with the way bans are reduced. Just going in and saying you're sorry usually gets your ban halved. That's ridiculous.
If the offence is worthy of a 10-week ban, then it should be a 10-week ban - no matter how sorry you are now. It's too late. You could have damaged that player's career with such a reckless act.
We don't need it in the game. Anyone who says the game has gone soft or reducing the ban is fine, they're not speaking for the good of the sport.
We need to look at the citing process on how they deal with this. Apologising or pleading guilt shouldn't get a reduction.
Also, I watch games and speak with other referees and we'll see incidents we think are definite red cards and then they're not even cited. That needs to be sorted out as well.
The more people you have citing across the world, the more it comes down to differing opinions. If you think of it across the world in the professional game, they won't have that many coming through in a weekend.
If you had 15-30 incidents, surely two people can spend a few hours looking through them all and then you have some consistency. At the moment, it's letting the game down.
When players can tackle a guy like that and get their sentence reduced by five weeks and get the same time as a guy who might tackle someone by accident.
I just can't fathom what is the point of having a ban of 10 weeks if you're going to reduce it? At the moment, you've got players being red carded because of accidents or rugby collisions.
They shouldn't be red cards in the first place. When people are sent off, it shouldn't be because people are unlucky. It should be for acts of thuggery or recklessness. If you fly into a ruck leading with your head or shoulder and show total disregard for what happens, then you deserve to be sent off and get the full ban for that offence.
So if the entry point is 10 weeks, you should be banned for 10 weeks. That's the deterrent in place.
But they need to look at exactly what are red cards. If you're sending someone off as a referee and everything thinks it's unlucky because it's a mistimed tackle, then it shouldn't be a red card.
It's not a case of 'red cards spoil games, it should only be for 20 minutes' then. It's about defining exactly what red cards should be.
They should be for nailed on acts of foul play you want out of the game. If you do something like that Brive player did, it should be 10 weeks out of the game, regardless of whether you apologise.
A red card should only be for an act of thuggery or recklessness. It should be for the guy who goes flying in with his arm tucked in to his side and his shoulder leading, not accidental collisions.
However, accidental incidents, such as Sam Warburton's red card in 2011 where the dynamics of his tackle caused Vincent Clerc's legs to go beyond the horizontal, aren't reckless or thuggish and shouldn't be a red card. If Sam had deliberately lifted him up, turned him face down and then dropped or even driven him into the ground, then that is a read card.
If we want to be serious about player safety, they really need to look at everything - what is a red card, lengths of ban and citing procedures. All of those things need to be more clearly defined.
The 20-minute red card just wants to paper over those cracks and blur the lines. That simply can't happen as it won't be for the good of the game.
