A bucketful of cards handed out by referees in the opening rounds of club rugby was a reflection of players taking a while to come to terms with new rules on the breakdown.
There have been games in which teams have been down a couple of players due to constant infringements and referees losing patience with players.
Otago Rugby Referees Association chairman Chris Hart said the increase in cards — in some games as many as four cards were dished out — was mainly based around the lack of compliance by players on the new rules.
He said the picture was now a lot clearer around the breakdown and players did not have the same amount of time to get their hands on the ball and get it free. It was taking players time to realise this, leading to more penalties.
New rules dictated as soon as one player — either an attacker or defender — arrived at the tackle then the breakdown had formed and players had to get their hands off the ball.
It used to be that an attacker and a defender would both have to be over the tackler for the breakdown to be formed.
Hart said the change had led to more penalties and by the time referees handed out four or five
in a row, the man in the middle often had no option but to get a card out.
He expected the rate of cards to decrease as players became more used to the laws. Hart said there were "penalties for Africa" in pre-season games for Super Rugby but no yellow cards were handed out as they were only friendly games.
Super Rugby sides had the time to
learn the new rules but club players had only two trainings a week. The Highlanders had brought top-ranked referee Ben O’Keeffe to their training sessions to get players to understand the laws.
Club players, if they had aspirations to go further, needed to learn to adhere to the new rules, he said.
Head-high tackling was also being clamped down upon and it was now completely the tackler’s responsibility where the tackle occurred. Hart said referees had to be consistent for 80 minutes and some players and coaches struggled with that.
Dunedin had some quality referees
refereeing the game to a high standard, he said.