By Oliver Brown
The skills of Richard Smith, KC, the silk who has just rescued Owen Farrell from World Cup damnation, come precisely as advertised. Guildhall Chambers, his Bristol-based law firm, attest to his capacity to “achieve incredible results from seemingly impossible situations”.
The overturning of Farrell’s red card in what had looked an open-and-shut case, with multiple video angles showing the England captain’s shoulder to the head of Wales’s Taine Basham, might just count as the lawyer’s most dazzling conjuring trick yet.
It had appeared, before the independent judicial committee’s astounding verdict, as if the primary debate was whether Farrell would be banned for three matches or four, or perhaps even six. Instead, Smith’s subtle persuasive skills have seen to it that he is not suspended for any.
Never mind missing England’s World Cup opener against Argentina next month, he is eligible for selection in Dublin on Saturday. So startling is the reprieve, the gag doing the rounds is that Donald Trump, running for a second presidential term despite facing four separate indictments, now wants Smith on speed-dial.
This will be remembered as quite the moment in the legal art of finding mitigation for an act that seems, even in slow motion, inexcusable. But it could yet go down as a bleak day for rugby. The sport is confronting a crisis over brain injuries so profound that Steve Thompson, the 45-year-old former England hooker who struggles to remember his own children’s names due to early onset dementia, wishes he had never played.
The Rugby Football Union insists it is listening, reiterating just this week a commitment to lower tackle height, with the intention of eliminating up to 4000 head injuries a year.
England captain Owen Farrell is free to line up against Ireland this weekend.Credit: Reuters
And yet it has just enlisted a barrister to argue, successfully, that Farrell should be exonerated for smashing into Basham’s head with such force that the Welsh back-rower failed a concussion protocol. What, pray, is the aim here? Is it truly to champion the cause of player welfare? Or is it simply to make sure that good old Owen makes it to Marseille on time?
Pleading mitigation in such an incident is a complex business. The most logical option is to seek clemency on the basis of it being a one-off, of the culprit committing an uncharacteristic error in judgment. Scant hope of that with Farrell, whose catalogue of high tackles is extensive enough to have been turned into a grisly viral montage, spanning everything from his clumsy hit on South Africa’s Andre Esterhuizen in 2018 to his assault on Charlie Atkinson, the Wasps teenager knocked out with a wild swinging forearm two years later.
And so the only recourse was to advance the “change in dynamics” defence. Essentially, the committee found that Jamie George’s involvement in the contact area caused Basham to fall straight into the path of Farrell’s onrushing shoulder. Except the side-on footage hardly paints England’s leader as an unwitting participant. At first, Farrell has both knees bent as he prepares to make the tackle. Then, once he connects with Basham’s head, without any obvious attempt to wrap the Welshman, his legs are straight, in the manner of somebody driving upwards.
It is, at face value, such a classic example of a dangerously high tackle that an RFU doctor could present it at a seminar. And it is instigated by a player who, to put politely, has form.
‘It is at this point that you wonder if the sport is guilty not just of a baffling decision but of an unforgivable dereliction of duty.’
Are such tackles permissible if you captain England?
His flooring of Basham was not the first time that Farrell’s bludgeoning technique had incurred a fittingly severe punishment. It was not even the first time this year. In January, he was banned for four games for driving his shoulder into the chin of Gloucester back-rower Jack Clement, reduced to three on the condition that, like a driver compelled to complete a speed awareness course, he attended “tackle school”.
And this is the figure whom the game sees fit to spare? It is an abysmal message to send, and it could yet have haunting implications. In a high-profile hearing, with the world of rugby waiting to find out how tough the committee would be, Farrell walked away scot-free, even as a repeat transgressor who had just delivered another direct hit to the head. Do we deduce from this ruling that such tackles are permissible, provided that you captain England and have access to the finest legal representation?
No wonder the Welsh camp are apoplectic. Basham, the victim in all this, is unlikely, after his failed head injury assessment, to start Saturday’s match against South Africa, thus limiting his World Cup opportunities. Farrell, the perpetrator, has missed a mere 17 minutes of rugby. It is at this point that you wonder if the sport is guilty not just of a baffling decision but of an unforgivable dereliction of duty.
Farrell was originally given a yellow card which was later upgraded to red.Credit: Getty
Even George Ford, the fly-half who stood to benefit from a Farrell absence at the World Cup, let slip the truth of what had happened, tellingly correcting himself in the middle of a radio interview from describing his teammate as “getting away with” the tackle. The incredulity is total, with players past and present united in astonishment that rugby’s rulemakers are still defending the indefensible on the most fraught issue of the age.
The long-form version of the ruling is needed urgently, if only to explain how the committee navigated a way past World Rugby’s decree that mitigation is irrelevant in the event of “always illegal” foul play. If the answers are inadequate, then both Six Nations and World Rugby need to appeal. For rugby’s sake, Farrell’s absolution cannot stand. The least that a man like Thompson is owed is for the sport to act with conviction and consistency when it comes to players’ brains.
Farrell’s escape suggests that it is doing anything but. An alarming precedent has been set, one that you can fully expect to see invoked once the class-action lawsuits start rolling in. It is far from melodramatic to suggest that the children who idolise Farrell will also be highly confused by what they have seen, and that they will have all one question when their tackling is next criticised. “Owen did it, so why can’t I?”
Rugby must think hard about whether this is a future it is prepared to contemplate. Otherwise it will, quite frankly, reap what it sows.
Telegraph, London
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