Players who dive or feign injury could be spending ten minutes in the sin bin at this year’s Rugby World Cup in an attempt to crack down on the “football culture” creeping into rugby.
Referees have been instructed to yellow card any player they believe to be faking an injury in order to gain a competitive advantage.
“Diving would be ungentlemanly conduct. It would be a straight yellow card,” said the chairman of the World Rugby match officials selection committee, John Jeffrey.
“There is a culture creeping in, I call it the football culture of simulation; people appealing to the referee, players -and it has happened a couple of times – diving.
“That is going to be sanctioned very heavily in this tournament. We are the showcase of our rugby event and it’s very, very important that we keep our values there and referees have been asked to sanction very heavily on that.”
It is certainly an interesting development, especially since rugby refs are allowed to use the video official to help them to determine whether or not foul play has occurred in a recent passage of play.
So even if a ref is unsure about whether or not a player is faking their injury, they can use replays to make a decision and dole out punishment.
