Outcome wise its a bit hard to see it being worse than a Yellow, but given what happened to Tupaea’s knee and he’s only just getting back to near that top flight level now its probably fair to be punishing based on the potential outcome.

Its early days for the north to get used to it yet, but the true beauty of the 20 minute card now we’ve had it in place for a while is how much less whinging about stuff there is. Fans, players, coaches, they all just cop it & move on because whether its perception or reality it just doesn’t feel like the card is a game killer.

Those sorts of “trying to do something you would normally try in rugby but screwing it up and doing a foul play” cards often have so much grey area; but the sanction that punishes the player more than the team really does seem to work here. Especially when we’ve had straight reds for punches, head-butts which are just so much more obviously deliberate & thus worse.