'Action's always illegal': Owens' Whistle Watch review of Farrell red

Retired Test centurion referee Nigel Owens has addressed the recent Owen Farrell red card on the latest edition of Whistle Watch.

The World Rugby-produced weekly review came in for some criticism last week when it avoided reference to the August 12 incident at Twickenham that resulted in the England skipper being red-carded via the TMO bunker after his initially yellow-carded offence.

On sending Farrell to the sin bin, referee Nika Amashukeli explained that the tackle on Wales’ Taine Basham would be reviewed by the TMO bunker and the verdict that emerged was that the tackle merited a red card.

This resulted in Farrell attending a virtually-held independent disciplinary hearing three days later where the red card was rescinded and the England out-half was freed to play on with immediate effect.

World Rugby appealed this decision and only now, after it emerged on Tuesday evening that Farrell must serve a four-match ban, has the Whistle Watch programme fronted by Owens given its review of the tackle on Basham.

“I’m sure a lot of you tuned in last week to hear what the review on the Farrell red card was,” began the Welshman. “Because of the judicial process, we don’t explain our views on it to be fair to everyone involved. But let us cover exactly what had happened and I want you to take away all the emotion.

“What you look at is, is their foul play? Yes, we have foul play and the foul play is leading with the shoulder. The arm is down by the side, so the arm is not ready to make that legal tackle, that wrap.

“If the arm is here ready (Owens holds his arms up in wrap position) and the shoulder makes contact first and we have an illegal tackle, then we only look at the height of the tackle and then we bring the mitigation to it.

“But we have an illegal action so the shoulder is leading, the arm is down here and we have contact direct to the head, so we have foul play and a high degree of danger.

“Do we then have any mitigation? I explained to you, no, we don’t because the action is always illegal, so mitigation does not play a part in the referee’s decision-making process.

“What the referee looks at here, as you saw in the game, is he decided this had reached the yellow card threshold and was thinking this could be more.

“So it goes to the bunker and the bunker reviews it and because of yes, we have foul play, yes, we have direct contact to the head, yes, we have a high degree of danger, we have no mitigation, therefore it is upgraded to a red card.”

Having been stood down from playing against Ireland last Saturday ahead of the appeal, that Summer Nations Series fixture was counted as the first of the four England games that the Farrell ban covers.

He will also miss this Saturday’s final August warm-up versus Fiji as well as the opening two England matches at the Rugby World Cup, the September 9 clash versus Argentina in Marseille and the September 17 meeting with Japan in Nice.