Completely agree that POC got off lightly => no way should it have been anything other than a citing. The comparison with Payne is valid though.artaneboy wrote:Paulie kicking Dave K in the head? No comparison! The charge there was he could see Dave and the ball and made the reckless decision to try and connect with one with his boot while not caring for the safety of the other player. O'Connell faced no danger in kicking Dave and was as aware as any player can be in the tumult of a game what he was attempting- that was not the situation yesterday. Paulie dodged a bullet there no mistake. Don't grudge him or Munster the chance to play Clermont in the semi- but he was very lucky! Don't try to pretend there equivalence there.All Blacks nil wrote:Agreedmatt wrote:If Rob Kearney did exactly the same today against Toulon (no intent to injure, eyes on the ball all the time, did not see Delon Armitage/Goode until he jumped in towards him) & Wayne Barnes gave a red card I think we would all feel hard done by.
I like most people put a priority on player safety just think for this incident a yellow was sufficient.
Ashton not as bad as D.Armitage or L.Williams but he is bloody annoying. May he drop one before touching down against Clermont it would give a lot of people a laugh.
Much more importantly I think we have a good 50:50 chance today on what could not be a more difficult assignment - COYBIB
Certain high profile case was viewed differently last season though
On the other hand Payne and Goode were going 50:50 for the ball unseeing of each other. It could easily have been the Ulster player that was injured as the Scracen- and would Goode have been red cared then? I'm not even sure it was a penalty at all. It was a unfortunate 'racing incident'- as they say in Formula 1.
Payne was running through, looking at the ball (all fine so far) but made no allowance for the fact that there was always going to be a player in the air coming towards him - that may seem harsh, but he has to be responsible - he essentially made the play as if there was going to be no-one contesting with him - ie had no regard for the safety of the other player. I have no issue at all with it being red and it should be. Where I would sympathize is that this type of tackle generally hasn't been red and there is a chance that Garces was swayed by the extent of the injury, which shouldn't have been the case. It was reckless and made no allowance for the safety of the other player - same as teh POC one (and the POC one happened much quicker - Payne should had his 4/5 seconds of his run up to check, allow for a what could happen, but didn't)