Jones, Wilson concur 'absurd' red cards are ruining rugby after Mostert, De Jager incidents

There has been no shortage of support for Franco Mostert, with All Blacks legend Jeff Wilson saying the red card shown to the Springbok against Italy is pushing rugby into “dangerous territory”. At the same time, Japan coach Eddie Jones described the card as “absurd”.

Wilson, who anchors the New Zealand rugby show The Breakdown, feels the previous week’s tough permanent red card for Lood de Jager set a precedent that the referee in the Italy game, James Doleman, felt pressured to emulate.

“South Africa are physical players and at the moment they’re getting punished for that when they get it slightly wrong. We’re getting into dangerous territory now,” Wilson said.

“We’ve seen across the entire weekend – and not just this weekend but last weekend as well – that referees are very quick to jump on these.

:The precedent was set with the first on-field full red (to De Jager), and I think James Doleman almost felt a responsibility because he had seen all the footage from last weekend. It’s a similar contact, and he would’ve been thinking, ‘World Rugby is watching, I can’t afford to let this one go’. That’s just ridiculous.”

Wilson praised the Boks for their response to both red cards.

“How good are South Africa? Two weeks in a row, they’re down to fourteen men, and they just go about their business and find a way,” he said.

“Italy were in this for long periods, and I think they would’ve told themselves they could taste a little bit of history. But then the Springboks just went up a gear.

"They scored a couple of tries when they were down to thirteen men. They are some sort of rugby team at the moment, which everyone is chasing.”

In the Wales–Japan game in Cardiff, there were four yellow cards, three of them to Japanese players. The colourful Jones was not amused.

“It is almost farcical now, the sin-bin situation. We are absolutely ruining the game of rugby,” Jones said. “I don’t think any of the actions today were intentional and deserved to be sin-binned — Wales or us.

“We need a more sensible approach to the game. There are going to be contacts with the head. Unless it is reckless — which I didn’t see — we shouldn’t be handing out cards like this.

“At one stage, we were down to thirteen men, they got a red card, and we’re still down to fourteen. The game of rugby is about fifteen players on the field, and World Rugby should be looking at this very closely.”

Jones highlighted the red card to Mostert in Turin.

“I saw the Italy game and what happened to Mostert — a guy gets chopped in front of him, he’s 6ft 8 and tries to drop his height, his shoulder brushes the head and he’s red-carded. It’s becoming absurd,” he concluded.