Hey Cobbers & Diggers All.
I hope you’ve all had a Pizza Pockets start to your week, filled with the warm, comforting, gooey goodness of melted ham and cheese.
That said, while some of us on the east coast of Oz are finally getting a wee break from this bloody incessant rain, others are having to paddle about in floodwaters again, which is not good.
What I do know is that, dealing with the big issues in life, pre-season training everywhere has been fairly decimated by this wet and, even as the son of a western NSW sheep farmer, even I am saying ‘enough already’. But then again, I’m not in the Ukraine so I’ll take life’s small mercies.
That said, Ukrainian farmers seem to be doing a roaring trade in repurposed 2nd hand tractors at least and I’m starting to see them pop up in interesting trade-sites about the web. In my darker humour moments, I’m sort of giggling at the vision of hundreds of ex-Russian BTR80s and T80s being stripped-down and employed wholesale as family farm tractors, pulling all sorts of harrow disc units, haywagons, firewood, goats & chickens to market, etc. on farms and in villages all over the Ukrainian countryside for the next 20+ years. Anyways…
Welcome to Week 2 of The Chewsday Chew. The purpose herein is not to write something overly complicated, but rather to pose a simple observation, question or proposition and let the good readers of this esteemed site share their opinions thereafter. Call it the lazy man’s attempt to fill a void by poking our collective bear of rugby knowledge to share their reflections and lift the average beyond the humdrum.
To that end, the grenade to be so-hurled for this week is… (drumroll)…
Be Jeez, By Jingo and By Crikey we saw some chat regarding cards over the last week did we not? From Big Taniela Tupou’s late-notice Clayton’s card (the card he got when he didn’t get a card), to Banksy’s “He’s already gone” post-departure face-plant card, to Tate’s ‘swinging arm’ card, they were coming thick and fast on-top of the half-dozen cards from the week before.
Now to be fair, Banksy’s and Tate’s cards were well inside the interpretations as currently applied, so the refs are scarcely to blame for applying the protocols they are told/paid to apply. But the fact the cards were dealt at all still left the door ajar for some (un?)justifiable frustrations to be aired about the nature of the cards and the protocols applied. And all that got me thinking about the worst cards I’ve seen given.
The worst yellow card in the history of rugby, nay possibly in the history of sport, was when a referee of certain ill-repute in the old Riverina zone once gave me (ME!?!?!?!?) a yellow card “On suspicion of being about to punch someone.” Yep. Fair dinkum. It was a yellow card for something that did not happen, incurred by someone who had not demonstrably done anything, against someone completely unidentifiable. Bugger me…
But it also got me thinking of the most unexpected cards I have seen given to others (of yellow or red variety) and that just made no sense. My early nominations for this auspicious award are:
Wobbly Samu Kerevi’s cheese for his raised forearm on Welshman Rhys Patchell during the Wobblies 25-29 loss to the Bhoyos at the 2019 Word Cup. Kerevi came on in a straight line into contact against which the Welsh replacement fly-half responded by coming in face-up to the tackle (sound familiar?) and Kerevi used his forearm to brace (not a leading-elbow or a headbutt or similar) and blasted the Welshman out of the contact area. And for nowt but good play he saw cheese. https://youtu.be/aEubPTA1-cw?t=434
South Africa’s Bismarck du Plessis imposed-cheese for his fantastic hit on God’s Own Dan Carter in the 4th round of the 2013 Rugby Championship. The mad Jaapie was both onside and simply making a cracking good tackle on “The Untouchable One” when he subsequently saw cheese for what reason I do not know during the Nearlies 29-15 defeat of the Catholics in ever-pleasant Auckland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhnQrt11Czk
So the question is – Are these the worst yellow cards ever given? Or do you have better?
And a late notice challenge to anyone who can take us through the protocol to be applied to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock scenario, and the card thus applied, and to whom.
