JUST last month World Rugby boss Brett Gosper said Wallabies backrower David Pocock wasn’t being targeted by opposition at the breakdown.

“I’m not sure he’s (Pocock) particularly targeted either,” Gosper told Australian reporters when in Sydney for a World Rugby committee meeting.

“I can’t comment on any one incident but we’re certainly against neck rolls, and the laws are against neck rolls and people are instructed to look out for that sort of behaviour.”

Those comments came after Pocock was forced to miss a Test against the Springboks due to injury after being targeted by the All Blacks in Bledisloe II and being the victim of a clear neck roll from Owen Franks.

Gosper added: “We are harsh on head rolls — if they’re seen, cited and so on.”

But they’re not and the citing process is flawed, which is setting a dangerous precedent and risking the longevity of the game’s premier breakdown exponents.

Twice in as many Tests, Pocock has been put in very dangerous positions at the breakdown and neither have been dealt with — either on the field or post match by the citing commissioner.

Against the Springboks, fullback Willie le Roux attempted to wrestle Pocock off the ball in the 68th minute at the breakdown.

But after realising he can’t “crocodile roll” Pocock off the ball, he deliberately pulls up and flips the man standing over the ball.

Pocock flips over his head and lands on his back.

One Test later, Argentina lock Tomas Lavanini was also beaten to the breakdown by Pocock in the 70th minute.

After realising he doesn’t have a chance to clear him away at the breakdown, Lavanini also started to pull Pocock up from the sternum and flips him dangerously.

At that point, Lavanini’s teammate Marcos Kremer comes storming into the breakdown to finish the job.

Already on his head, the Argentina No 7 crashes into Pocock and fails to use his arms in the tackle as he leans with his right shoulder first.

Kremer doesn’t even get his left arm close to Pocock, as it makes contact first with his teammate Tomas Cubelli.

But South African referee Jaco Peyper doesn’t penalise the foul play and Pocock is left pointing at Kremer.

The two ugly incidents come less than a fortnight after Gosper disputed the notion that Pocock was targeted.

But in both Tests, Pocock was the only player flipped over his head.

Given both incidents occurred in front of the referee, it’s hard to imagine that both were missed.

Nor has the citing commissioner stepped in.

And that is where the citing process is flawed.

Whether or not either incident warranted a red card is up for debate.

But given that World Rugby has attempted to crackdown on any contact or dangerous play to the neck or head since 2017, it could be justified in both cases that red cards should have been shown.

Remarkably, too, it was less than a fortnight ago that World Rugby gave reporters a briefing on the dangers of concussion and how they’re attempting to eradicate high contact from the game.

Only over the weekend, Irish international Stuart Olding, playing for Brive in a French division two league match against Soyaux Angouleme, was correctly red carded for a horrible tackle that saw an opposing ball carrier flipped.

While the high speed nature of the incident made the danger more obvious — in both the Olding tackle and the examples on Pocock — players were left in extremely vulnerable positions.

Yet despite Pocock being flipped into a similar position to the Soyaux Angouleme player, no action was taken.

The other point is that because the citing commissioner either didn’t deem — or missed entirely — the aforementioned cases on Pocock to have met the red card threshold, no action can therefore be taken on the men in question.

As such, opposition players — as a result of World Rugby’s negligence — realise they can push the boundaries to the limit and target Pocock because the breakdown isn’t being penalised like it should be.

The irony is that in both the home Test against Argentina and away fixture against the Springboks last month, the Wallabies were penalised twice for tackling players beyond the breakdown.

Yet, at the breakdown, Pocock has twice been flipped into dangerous positions and no action has been taken.

By not officiating properly at the breakdown, World Rugby is failing to protect the game’s specialists at the ruck.

Earlier this year, former Wales and British and Irish Lions captain Sam Warburton was forced to retire after his battered body cried enough.

He had one piece of advice to World Rugby.

“You have to look at the cleanouts,” Warburton said in an interview with The Times.
“You need to protect the jackalers.”

One well known critic of World Rugby for their lack of action on the breakdown is Fiji’s gold medal winning coach Ben Ryan.

The English coach has been regularly tweeting about World Rugby’s lack of action.

“It’s isn’t the officials in the games to blame — it’s those at World Rugby that have effectively told them to ignore laws in the book that are there for a very good reason,” Ryan tweeted on September 30.

In an earlier tweet, he wrote: “Players retiring early, calls for less contact in training or reduced seasons. Why? THE BREAKDOWN. Apply law and look and interpret the right things in any injury audits.”

In addition, the double standards of tackling players without the ball were plainly obvious against Argentina on Sunday (AEDT).

In the 42nd minute, Pocock is tackled late by Kremer and slammed into the ground above the horizontal.

The only reason why the tackle doesn’t end dangerously is because Pocock puts his left arm out to prevent flipping onto his head.

And yet, in the 70th minute, Wallabies hooker Tolu Latu is penalised for tackling Kremer without the ball despite the contact being marginal at best and not affecting the play.

A comparison of the two incidents makes for complete double standards.

Test rugby will always be brutal.

But World Rugby must do more to protect its greatest assets.