Joe Schmidt: Time to tackle reckless kicking in rucks

Joe Schmidt’s call for World Rugby to review the practice of players attempting to kick the ball out of rucks gained further credence yesterday following the decision not to cite England’s Mike Brown after his boot made contact with Conor Murray’s face in Saturday’s Six Nations tie.

The Ireland scrum-half was forced from the field with a cut close to his eye following the 70th-minute incident at Twickenham and needed eight stitches in the wound, although head coach Schmidt reported yesterday that the Munster man had thankfully escaped any damage to the left eye itself.

Brown’s actions had not warranted any on-field sanction as they had been deemed to be accidental given the context of his freedom to dislodge the ball from the ruck with his boot.

While Schmidt chose not to comment on that decision by referee Romain Poite following the 21-10 defeat by England, he did say: “There is a lot of kicking the ball out of the ruck and I just think it’s probably something that even the lawmakers or the officials have to have a bit of a look at just regarding player safety, particularly with the head and particularly the eyes as it was in this incident.”

That approach was endorsed yesterday by former Test referee Jonathan Kaplan, the South African ex-official telling The Times he thought Brown should have received a red card, which would have automatically triggered a citing.

“I cannot agree that Mike Brown’s constant and reckless use of the boot, which made contact with Murray’s head, was one big accident,” Kaplan told The Times. “

World Rugby has gone to great lengths to protect the player in the air, it should be no different for the player on the deck.

“Brown needed to exercise more care when putting his boot there and a red card would have been more apt. I would be astonished if this wasn’t cited.”

Brown, one of England’s trio of vice-captains, took to his Twitter account yesterday to absolve himself of any wrongdoing.

“Video ref clearly showed I didn’t (do anything wrong) and kicked the ball,” Brown said.

As it was, Douglas Hunter, the citing officer at Twickenham on Saturday decided the full-back’s actions did not warrant due process.

Schmidt yesterday for once did not have a raft of injuries to report, only Murray’s, and he even had some good news for Ireland ahead of their round four home game with Italy on March 12, signalling the return to action of outside centre Jared Payne, who missed the England game with a hamstring injury suffered against France.

“He has got eight stitches in the corner of the eye but hopefully will be back training tomorrow without contact,” Schmidt said of Murray.

He told RTÉ: “His eye is closed over, pretty much, with the inflammation and bruising but there is nothing too damaging there apart from obviously the sutures.

“On the good news front, Jared Payne was back running Monday and is expected to train fully (today). So hopefully that is the case and it gives us someone coming back into the group instead of someone going outside the group.”