“I’d ask those in charge of the sport if we are serious about player safety. Let’s not talk about is that a red card or isn’t it."
Those were the words of Dragons director of rugby Dean Ryan after Jonathan Davies escaped a red card for a high tackle on Josh Lewis during their win over the Scarlets in Llanelli.
“If we ask that that question often enough then maybe they might change some of the answers. I am just not convinced that people are serious about dealing with head injuries, certainly not against the Dragons.”
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Ignoring that last little part of the sentence concerning a prejudice against the Rodney Parade side, there's a point to be made in player safety and what exactly is being done by all parties.
Davies escaped a red this weekend, but many others didn't. There were five handed out across the eight Champions Cup ties for high tackles - a stunning figure however you look at it.
In fact, there were 20 cards in total shown across the eight matches.
Since Opta began tracking card data in 2009, only on one other occasion have twenty cards been shown in a European weekend. That was in 2012/13 and there were 12 games that weekend, not eight.
Sale's Arron Reed, Bordeaux’s Maama Vaipulu, Leicester's Ollie Chessum, Ulster's Tom O’Toole and Stade Francais' Sefa Naivalu were the five who were sent off for high hits.
Last weekend saw reds for two very different incidents. Axel Müller's sending off for Brive was as clear cut as it gets - a cheap, nasty high shot that was pretty sickening to watch.
At the other end of the scale, Leicester's Guy Porter saw red for what, on some glances, looked like an accidental clash of heads. The carelessness with which Porter ran into Fritz Lee off the ball certainly amounted to his ban for being 'reckless'.
Throw in Dan Biggar's red for a high shot on Chris Harris during Northampton's Challenge Cup defeat to Gloucester, along with the cards doled out in recent weeks in the southern hemisphere where Super Rugby seems to be handing them out like confetti, and there's clearly an issue here.
The sheer number of punishments suggests that officials are doing what is required of them to lower the number of head-high tackles in the game. In fact, some would argue they could have gone further this weekend.
Maybe the question is why haven't players and coaches adapted? The argument was always that if something would continually result in punishment, then behaviour would eventually change.
Tackle height isn't a new problem, so why hasn't it changed? Is it players and coaches wilfully ignoring it? Or is it simply the case that they can't.
The game is played at a breakneck speed after all. Some tackles are just going to be high - that's an unfortunate fact. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be punished, of course.
Nor is it a reason to not attempt to eradicate them. The logic of 'accidents happen' - even if said accidents are commonplace in certain tackle types - isn't a motive to stop looking to eliminate them in advance.
That might be tricky if the rewards outweigh those risks in the game. Given how the breakdown is in the modern game, there's perhaps more reward on taking man and ball and stopping the offload or making a dominant tackle than there is risk in one of those upright tackles being a high one.
Defence coaches almost can't afford to bring tackle height down all that much or they risk giving up too much of an advantage to the opposition. That's a concern.
What do you think can be done to make rugby safer? Have your say in the comments below
Ryan is probably right in the sense that the discussion should begin with safety, rather than whether something warrants a red card or not. Getting dredged into a case-by-case basis of whether a referee has been too strict tends to take some of the blame away from players and onto the officials.
Sometimes, the ideal of 'I didn't mean to hit him in the face' seems to be too quick an excuse to reach for - while some pundits hardly help in that regard either with making it all about the referees. However, it's true that making those playing the game the target of blame isn't exactly helpful either.
Looking to players, coaches or referees as scapegoats probably isn't how to go about things. In truth, it's not clear what will be.
Perhaps eradicating high tackles isn't the panacea some think it is when it comes to rugby and brain injuries. In fact, it's almost certain it isn't.
How the sport deals with concussive incidents is important. So too is exploring what can be done to reduce the number of sub-concussive incidents players are exposed to.
Eliminating contact to the head won't solve all of the issues the sport is facing. Far from it. The impending legal action is reminder enough of that.
But, even if not deliberate, it's hard to deny there's been a collective refusal within the sport to accept the message that tackle height needs to be lower. And the longer that continues, the worse things are going to get.
