Should two yellows equal a red in rugby league, asks Phil Clarke
Wednesday 6 April 2016 14:37, UK
The sin bin was first used in this country back in 1982 when Great Britain played Australia in a Test Match in Hull.
Anybody who has any understanding of sport knows that it is an area off the field where a player who has committed a foul or broken the rules can be sent to for a specified time period.
In fact, even if you have never watched sport before you would still fathom it is a half-way house to being sent off.
Common sense dictates that you would use it for the more serious or repetitive offences that players or teams commit. It is for incidents that are not worthy of a red card but more serious than just a penalty.
Before I continue with my point I want to make it clear that this is not a criticism of a referee, more a point I wish to raise about the use of the sin bin in general.
I am going to use a specific example but I don't even know who the referee of the Wigan v Warrington game was.
This is not a criticism of a referee but an observation on the game and it is not the first time I have made this point in 2016. I have consistently felt that we do not use the sin bin enough and have this fear of forcing a team to play with 12 men for 10 minutes.
I watched another game recently when I thought that the referee should have used his yellow card on three occasions. It seems as though I am out of tune with the match officials so let me put my case forward.
Liam Farrell has accepted a ban of 80 minutes but at the time, and with the aid of a video referee and replays, he did not serve 10 minutes in the bin.
Stefan Ratchford dived along the in-goal area to score just before half-time when Warrington played at Wigan last Thursday. As he did so, Liam Farrell came in, after he had already grounded the ball, and made contact with his knee into the side of the try scorer.
The referee felt that this was foul play and awarded an eight-point try, but the incident looked bad and could have caused a bigger problem if the Warrington players hadn't reacted with such discipline. However, the ref chose not to send Farrell to the bin.
Earlier this week Farrell was charged by the RFL with striking an opponent and entered an Early Guilty Plea. He received the lowest possible suspension for his Grade B offence and was suspended for one match.
So let me put this to you. Farrell has accepted a ban of 80 minutes but at the time, and with the aid of a video referee and replays, he did not serve 10 minutes in the bin. That just does not make sense to me.
There have been 21 yellow cards in Super League this season. Five of these were for Interference in the play-the-ball area, three for offside and two for obstruction. Are you really telling me that those types of offences are worse that striking a player with your knee after he has scored a try?
This then leads onto another interesting question. Should two yellow cards in one match equal a red as they do in the most popular game in this country, football? Farrell had been sent to the sin bin for holding down Daryl Clark earlier in the first half after the Wolves had made a break down the centre of the field.
Farrell was perhaps a little unlucky as he seemed to get entangled with Clark but was sin-binned. It was in a potential try-scoring situation and I agree it was a sin bin in the current system, but it did not seem as serious an offence.
We need to ensure that the game is easy to understand and that the rules make sense to the common sports fan. If you got 100 people to watch both incidents and asked them to guess which incident resulted in the player being binned, I would be amazed if more than five voted for the minor interference at the play-the-ball.
So if he had been given a yellow for the foul on Ratchford do you think he should be able to come back on after his second yellow?
The current rules allow a player to be sent to the sin bin several times in one game. In fact, we have had matches when a player has had two yellow cards, but that just doesn't seem right to me.
I've read in the past that putting a man in the in bin ruins a game as it disadvantages the team too much and spoils the match. I don't believe that is true in Super League. If I mix yellow with yellow I see red and so should the referee.
Let's empower the officials to make decisions there and then, and for it to make common sense.
