It means that Farrell, who was widely tipped to miss the World Cup opener against Argentina on September 9, is free to knock an Irish player out of the World Cup with a high tackle on Saturday.

Makes a mockery of the whole in match review system…

WR’s judiciary system has form for this. In the Ireland - New Zealand series last year, the Irish forwards played a deliberate defensive tactic of tackling upright, and trying to hold the NZ ball carrier up until the referee called tackle which gave their defensive line more time to set.

Inevitably one of those tackles went wrong in Wellington when Porter attempted this against Retallick and caused a head clash that not only concussed Retallick out of Rugby, it also broke his cheek and meant he didn’t play for quite some time.

Wayne Barnes only gave a Yellow card claiming that it was a soaking or passive tackle, so wasn’t high danger. Then the judiciary agreed.

This despite the whole point of carding head contact was to try to encourage players and coaches to get the tackle height lower, and in particular remove the potentialy for head clashes (because when 2 heads clash in a tackle, that’s double the chance of a concussion).

On top of all that; I think most international rugby fans would buy my contention that like the Sexton incident, if this were a player from somewhere else, say Argentinian, or a Pacific Island player they would not be receiving this kind of leniency. Leniency which comes after the player in question has been repeatedly carded & cited for high shots exactly like this one, and which after going to tackle school for the last citing has not changed their technique at all.

I say this as someone English, who thinks we play better with Farrell on the pitch: he should have been banned for a substantial period of time. It’s madness that he’s not.

Sexton. Fagerson. Farrell. A mockery of player welfare all three decisions. I hope world rugby get sued out to oblivion

Seen a few suggestions that WR are planning on appealing the judiciary decision, and I really think they do need to. This rogue decision undermines the IMHO really positive change of adopting an off-field bunker review for these cards.

I was thinking about just how wrong this judiciary decision feels and it took me back a little to when Jordie Barrett had a red card reduced after his foot contacted Koroibete’s face. That was a fairly controversial reduction in the card, but there was a lot of agreement about the facts on it, even from non-Kiwis. And the most vitriolic against reducing it from red would claim that Jordie karate kicked Koroibete’s face which was such a hyperbolic exaggeration of what happened that it was easy to dismiss them.

Contrasting it with Farrell i’ve barely seen anyone, even English fans, who think reducing it from a Red was right; and the facts of the tackle seem to be pretty well agreed by everyone - apart from the 3 aussie chaps on the judiciary.

Another recent card (that was Red, and stayed Red) that came to mind was Angus Ta’avao in the 2nd NZ-Ireland test in Christchurch. The Judiciary in Farrell’s case claim there was a sudden change in dynamic/direction. They should watch the Ta’avao tackle because in that case the cut line from Ringrose was so late, and so sharp that Ta’avao had less than half a second to adjust.