Referee gives Richie yellow card

26 August 2014 - 02:03 By Craig Ray
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NO IMPOSSIBLE! All Blacks captain and open-side flank Richie McCaw gets a yellow card from French referee Romain Poite during the match against Australia on Saturday. It is only his second yellow card in 129 Tests
NO IMPOSSIBLE! All Blacks captain and open-side flank Richie McCaw gets a yellow card from French referee Romain Poite during the match against Australia on Saturday. It is only his second yellow card in 129 Tests
Image: HANNAH PETERS/GETTY IMAGES

When All Blacks captain Richie McCaw received a yellow card from French referee Romain Poite, against Australia at Eden Park on Saturday, there was a collective gasp around the rugby world.

McCaw, playing his 129th Test, does not receive yellow cards even when he deserves them. He is almost untouchable. It was only his second yellow card in 13 years as a Test player as New Zealand romped to a 51-20 win.

Digest that fact for a moment. Two yellow cards in 129 matches, playing in a position that, by its very nature, demands that wearers of the No7 jersey (No6 in South Africa) straddle a thin line between illegal and legal. How is that possible?

The second most staggering event to emerge was that All Black coach Steve Hansen actually criticised McCaw after the game, calling the card "dumb".

When McCaw conceded a penalty in the Super rugby final to cost the Crusaders the match, and the title, against the Waratahs, there was a national outcry in NZ. South African referee Craig Joubert was even badgered on a NZ radio station last week into conceding he might have made a mistake with that call.

All open-side flanks cheat; it's part of the job description, even if coaches and players don't call it that. Holding a player down, holding the ball long enough for support to arrive, entering a ruck from the side, not releasing the ball carrier are some accepted norms.

As a result, the odd yellow card is part of the deal over the course of a season, depending on how hawkish the referee is on the day.

McCaw, though, has onlyreceived the odd yellow in an entire career. It doesn't stack up. Prior to Saturday he'd played 128 Tests and only once sat in the sin bin - against Wales in 2006.

There can only be two possible reasons: McCaw hardly ever bends the law, and so is not doing his job, or referees are more lenient with him.

McCaw would have made about 1300 tackles in those games and probably joined twice as many rucks - about 4500 incidents excluding line-outs, scrums and the offside line. What discipline!

Schalk Burger, an equally enthusiastic open-side - and McCaw's contemporary, has got six yellows in 71 Tests since his debut in 2004. Current Wallaby captain Michael Hooper, another open-side flank, has only been playing international rugby for two years, yet he has earned four yellow cards in his 33 Tests.

Burger could be accused of being less subtle than McCaw, but breaking the law is breaking the law, and some players are more equal than others.

McCaw has perhaps benefited from being part of a dominant era of All Black rugby in which there has been less defensive pressure

But, even so, it's a remarkable statistic in a game increasingly monitored by officials.

No wonder the NZ public and media are in a froth - they're only starting to understand how the rest of the world has felt for more than a decade.

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