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On the two-match ban handed to Gonzalo Quesada by World Rugby after his comments about the referee in New Zealand v Italy, DanPat and Mario of Pillole Ovali split where they usually agree: not on what happened, but on what should change.
Was Quesada wrong?
Mario says yes, and the issue is procedure before substance. A head coach has official channels for a complaint – World Rugby even includes Italians who help write those laws – and using them is not a bureaucratic detail.
In a world like this you have to do things the right way, otherwise it is anarchy, and rugby is a combat sport.
Hence the verdict: two matches is a fair sanction, because the protocol exists and was not followed.
The problem is not silencing coaches
DanPat starts from the same place and ends up somewhere else. The starting point is uncontroversial in rugby: without a referee there is no game, and laws have to be interpreted, which exposes whoever blows the whistle. But the direction World Rugby has taken, he argues, complicates rather than simplifies.
On one side officiating has become baroque: TMO calls for incidents that turn out not to exist, panels contradicting what everybody saw on the field. On the other, coaches are told to keep quiet, when in other sports a coach can say a performance was poor without anyone blinking.
To make life easier for referees you don’t have to silence the coaches, you have to simplify the laws.
The card in question
On the yellow shown to Niccolo Cannone the position is nuanced: the movement is ugly and a card is defensible, but classifying it as carrying a high degree of danger remains arguable. It is exactly the grey area where refereeing discretion turns into controversy.
Both men, for the record, admit they went too far in their own tone about the French referee in the days after the match.
The contrarian conclusion
The ending shifts the balance. Confusing laws, protocols and sanctions aside, DanPat still believes today’s rugby is a better sport than it was twenty years ago. Which makes the argument about the laws not a trial but maintenance work: the game has to stay readable, for the people refereeing it and the people watching it.
Read also: Italy’s season: the average that counts is a weighted one · The Miotti case: meritocracy or the value of the system? · all news
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