Aurélien Canot, Media365, published on Thursday October 10, 2024 at 4:58 p.m.
Ugo Mola reacted Thursday, two days before Clermont’s visit to Ernest-Wallon, to World Rugby’s intention to reduce the red card to twenty minutes. For the Stade Toulousain coach, totally against it, this is total nonsense.
The twenty-minute red card? Ugo Mola says no. Among the next rules that World Rugby plans to add to those already in force, one in particular is already causing a lot of talk. This is obviously the wish of the body to reduce the red card, today synonymous with definitive exclusion (Editor’s note: World Rugby has already moved in this direction). The sanctioned player would still not be able to find his place on the pitch after twenty minutes, as the title might suggest. On the other hand, his team could now replace him once these twenty minutes have passed and therefore no longer finish the match fourteen against fifteen, as is currently the case. For the Stade Toulousain coach, the implementation of this new rule would constitute nothing more and nothing less than an aberration. “The 20-minute red card is for me a manifest error,” Mola declared Thursday two days before the arrival of Clermont (6th day of Top 14), which will obviously be marked by the return to competition of Antoine Dupont. For the coach of the double French champions, this rule goes precisely against the definition of the red card.
Mola: “This poses a problem for me philosophically”
“If you make a mistake that deserves a red card, but you allow a player to come in for you, that poses a problem for me philosophically. You can’t ask a team to be as disciplined as possible and give them a joker despite everything. It is rather this dichotomy that there can be between the proposed rules. Mola may not be at the end of his troubles. In addition to modifying the regulations concerning the red card, World Rugby would also have in mind to limit to thirty seconds the time for playing scrums and touches and to sixty seconds that for taking a transformation, to force the ball to be played from the first stop of a maul or to let the play continue even if the throw is not straight.
