Hear hear Mr Joubert

Drew Mitchell now holds a place in history as the first Wallaby to be sent off against the All Blacks after receiving two yellow cards in the 28-44 loss to the All Blacks on Saturday night.

It will be argued by many Australian media and supported (yes GreenAndGoldRugby.com, I’m looking at you) that Mitchell was hard done by, but it was actually the result of some good refereeing and Craig Joubert being unafraid to make the tough call.

Mitchell’s first yellow card is indisputable, especially when viewed after Owen Franks’s yellow card for a similar infringement earlier. It’s one of those silly shoulder charges which happens occasionally and gets dealt with appropriately.

Late in the first half referee Joubert called out both captains and explained to them that both teams were interfering with players attempting to take quick taps from penalties and asked that both teams cut it out. “I will escalate to yellow cards if I have to,” was Joubert’s parting words.

Fast forward to the second half and Conrad Smith attempts to take a quick lineout, only to have the ball slapped out of his hands by Mitchell. Clearly the referee’s patience had run out with this sort of play and he called Mitchell and the captain over for a chat.

Here is where a lesser referee would have chickened out and not issued Mitchell his second yellow card and given another warning which would have made a farce of his earlier warning. Referees are loath to bring out their red card, but to not yellow card a player simply because he has already seen one is highly damaging to a referee’s credibility.

Instead Joubert told Wallaby captain Rocky Elsom and Mitchell that he took “no responsibility for how this decision affects the outcome of the game”, showed Mitchell a yellow card, followed by the red. And the referee should not have to take responsibility for that, as both incidents view in isolation are clearly worth a yellow card, and both required Mitchell to first put himself in a situation where a yellow card was likely.

So congratulations to referee Joubert for having the testicular fortitude to produce a red card in a situation where far too many referees would wimp out. There should be no difference between what is required to receive a first, or second yellow card and tonight Joubert proved himself capable of doing just that.

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The Hear hear Mr Joubert by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.