Munster head coach Clayton McMillan said the days of rugby players being sent off for thuggery are gone and that most disciplinary decisions now involving red cards are for technical fouls.
He’s pleased that hooker Diarmuid Barron, who had a yellow card upgraded to a 20-minute red card in the defeat to Connacht last weekend, had the decision rescinded by a disciplinary committee.
The decision proved costly for Munster. They were trailing 7-0 when the incident with Connacht hooker Dylan Tierney-Martin happened and by the time replacement hooker Lee Barron came on at the end of the red card, the deficit was out to 21-0.
“The main ones that you see really are head on head contact – the days where acts of thuggery were red-card incidents; those are long gone now and what we’re seeing is just people get technique slightly wrong and the only way to improve that is through repetition and training best practice and hopefully that’s what evolves,” McMillan said.
“We try to just coach best practice. There are no coaches in here that sort of coach to try to push the letter of the law or bend the rules.
