Law discussion: knocking out

On Saturday, the Golden Lions played the Western Province in Johannesburg. Early in the match there was an incident which may be worthy of mention - a yellow-card incident.

From a tackle/ruck the Golden Lions went left. Michael Bondesio got into a half gap and got a pass to Warren Whiteley who made ground and= the passed to his left where Ruan Combrinck was but Gerhardt van den Heever of Western Province was falling back between Whitefly and Combrinck. Van den Heever put up a hand and knocked the ball up. Then, quite deliberately he batted the ball into touch with his right hand.

This happened about four metres in from touch and about five metres from the Western Province line.

The referee penalised Van den Heever and sent him to the sin bin. Later in his summary, Naas Botha said: "It was not a yellow card." The yellow card was there for all to see but he probably meant that it should not have been a yellow card, was not a yellow-card offence.

Law 10.2 (c) Throwing into touch. A player must not intentionally knock, place, push or throw the ball with his arm or hand into touch, touch-in-goal, or over the dead-ball line.

Sanction: Penalty Kick on the 15-metre line if the offence is between the 15-metre line and the touch-line, or, at the place of the infringement if the offence occurred elsewhere in the field of play, or five metres from the goal-line and at least 15 metres from the touch-line if the infringement occurred in in-goal.

What Van den Heever did was clearly an infringement - a serious infringement.

The Law goes on about the seriousness:

A penalty try must be awarded if the offence prevents a try that would probably otherwise have been scored.

The incident certainly occurred in the try-scoring zone but it would have been a stretch of the imagination to say that a try would probably have been scored.

The referee's further sanction is up to him, but the law views such deliberate infringements in a really serious light.

Law 10.2 UNFAIR PLAY

(a) Intentionally Offending. A player must not intentionally infringe any Law of the Game, or play unfairly. The player who intentionally offends must be either admonished, or cautioned that a send off will result if the offence or similar offence is committed, or sent off. After a caution a player is temporarily suspended from the match for a period of ten minutes playing time. After a caution, if the player commits the same or similar offence, the player must be sent off.

A caution = a yellow card. They go together.

Take Van den Heever's act and where and in what part of play it occurred and the caution (with yellow card) is a reasonable decision.

The place where the referee awarded the penalty - 15 metres in from touch was also correct.