DSPN - Devlin Sports Podcast Network
Jeff the Ref: Why Blues' Zarn Sullivan Should Have Been Red Carded
21 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What controversial calls were made in Super Rugby this week?
I think that's as dodgy as a 2am curry. I don't think that's good for you, mate. I think that's full pass.
No parent at home wants their kid on the field with that happening to them. And so they're trying to rid this out of the game, right?
Yeah, yeah. He said he sat stewing on on the way home and he did my job for me. He was like mitigating falling into the tackle, not mitigating direct shoulder, head contact, forceful shoulder to head contact, late contact with a player, taking player off the ball, taking a player when they're already being tackled, high body position. I was like, this guy, Dory, you should be a ref. How good?
Welcome to the DSPN.
The Devlin Sports Podcast Network.
It's Jeff the Ref time on Tuesday as we always do. We're welcoming our good mate, the CEO of WebWonks, one of our general sponsors, Jeff McGregor. G'day. Community and club ref for over 16 years, treasurer of the North Harbour Referees Association, 230 Loft Bar, Christchurch, Saturday.
Got to tell you, we're going to be putting on a couple for you if you love the DSPN, if you're a supporter of ours. You watch us and you are in Christchurch for the Super Round. Even if you're not going to the games, come up to the Loft Bar, Christchurch Saturday afternoon and say hello. We really look forward to seeing you there. Click that subscribe button, DSPN YouTube channel.
It really helps as well. And Changing Sheds is on Friday. That's our pay-per-view model. A couple of bucks a week if you want to support us financially. We put a lot of opinion, extra bits and pieces out an episode every Friday called Changing Sheds newsletter you get every Friday as well. Thank you so much. All right, Jeff, let's waste no time whatsoever.
Let's get into it.
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Chapter 2: Why was Zarn Sullivan's tackle debated for a red card?
So if you go and look at the protocols for yellow card sort of head contact process, has the head contact occurred? Yes. Was there any foul play? Yes. What was the degree of danger? Well, I think that there's the high degree of danger, and it says mitigation will not apply for any intentional or highly reckless acts.
Well, I think it's highly reckless, but if there is mitigation, it goes to yellow card. And that's where you'll hear the ref say the mitigation was that he was falling into it. And so by using that magic word mitigation, I think that that's where it all lets it go. And so when the TMO looks at it, he's got in the back of the head, there's mitigation.
If that word had never been said, I think we would have seen that the TMO would have elevated it to arrest.
Is that not when you, the worst thing about this is it looks really bad. Okay. And you've got to add that to it, even though it might not be officially in the rule book. It's the perception that you get. This to me is the poster child of what not to do. Absolutely. And that's what it looks like to me. I'm not saying Zan Sullivan is a dirty player or anything like that because he's not.
But this was just a really clumsy, if not reckless, way of going into that tackle. And you end up smacking the guy right in the chops. Every time you view it, to me, it looks worse. And that's why I think it has to be a red card.
Yeah, I think so. I'm just looking to see how often Jordan's actually had a game, and he hasn't had many. And so maybe that on-field experience is not quite there yet. I think that that should definitely be something that they should be stamping out of the game. He stands, like you say, he's got his feet planted there.
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Chapter 3: How does head-on-head contact affect player safety?
His shoulder sort of seems to go into it. I don't think that there's enough mitigation, personally. Again, this is the same thing that I've talked about in the past. Once you start applying the rulebook, he applied the rulebook correctly, The problem is, it's that caveat of the mitigation that lets him go to the next step that says, now it's just a yellow.
Had he not said that, it should have been a red.
Is this something that the judiciary, if there is such a thing like this, I always thought that they need that NRL judiciary after every game.
I wondered that, yeah.
And take another look at this afterwards and say, on reflection, this deserves more of a punishment.
I think it's slightly different to league. League has a lot of higher tackles, and they'll put someone on report, so they've got that mechanism in the game, whereas rugby doesn't have that. I did wonder if there was maybe going to be a sighting commissioner on the Monday morning, but that didn't come yesterday, so it was obviously deemed to be, like they say, that mitigation piece. Okay.
Yeah. All right, a couple now, one from the Blues Highlanders and one also from the Force Crusaders, and we're looking at four passes here. We're going to go first, Blues Highlanders. Tito Harris...
It is blatantly forward.
Every time I look at this, it looks more forward. And you think that from this particular angle or the shooter on the grassy knoll that people get confused. Physically, you can't pass the ball underhanded like that in any other way except forward in that situation.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of quick tap penalties near the line?
If it's grey, stay away. So the TMO doesn't want to come in on that. I don't know that we should be refereeing rugby to the scoreline and saying... I'm not saying that they did, but I get a feeling... I can see what you're saying with it, yeah.
Does the TMO need to come in on that?
Well, again, I think that's because it's so grey. It's such a marginal thing. Two erudite, handsome men, and we're disagreeing. I go back to 2007. So why wouldn't the TMO disagree?
The reason the TMO is in rugby now is because Wayne Barnes missed that pass in 2007, which was blatantly forward, right? Yeah. And here we are, 20 years later, and still haven't got whatever it is on the field, whether they need to grid it out, do what the NFL do.
You do the NFL thing, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And actually have five-meter lines. If you had five-meter lines with the broken line, you would be able to get your back 10 meters or else you're going to be encroaching, and you'd be able to pick up these things a lot easier.
Wow.
Well, I think it comes down to, obviously, Super Rugby only has so much money to be putting into things. And if you look at the cricket scenario and you see in Australia, cricket Australia has the best technology. If you go to Bangladesh last night... Don't ask the English.
They'll disagree after some of those Ashes series decisions, right?
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Chapter 5: How do forward pass decisions impact game outcomes?
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Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. Product disclosure statement available at generalfinance.co.nz. 36 minutes, another one of these, quick tap, halfback gallops off, scores the try.
It's gone forward, it's a penalty to the Drew. Oh, they tap, they go, and they score!
It's 5-0, what's up? We first pointed this out when Cam Roygard did this earlier in the year. And again, there's been no change to this law. I just want to raise it again because it's just a situation which is impossible for the defending team. Impossible, absolutely.
There's nothing that can be done here.
Again, great heads-up play from the halfback. He gets the call. He knows that if he's running towards the line, when he gets tackled on the line, that could also be a penalty try there because that guy can't tackle him.
I think so. And also, there could have been a yellow card that was coming anyway because he slaps the ball out of the way, which creates the penalty offence in the first instance. He takes the tap. It appears to be ahead of the mark, but you're allowed to do that.
Because it's within a metre or two.
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Chapter 6: What role does the TMO play in rugby officiating?
The draw player pushes the Brumby's player. He then hits into the draw player. The rules in the high tackle for head contact procedure in the TMO protocols, no foul play. Head contact is unavoidable, which may include tackler in a good position to make a legal tackle. He wasn't that. To be fair, he was standing tall. A sudden or significant drop in height by the ball player.
I would say that's sudden.
Because he got hit by the other defender.
Yeah.
No time to readjust. That definitely applies here. He had no time to readjust. Or on involuntary collision. Well, I would say that it was an involuntary collision as well. So in that case, it can be deemed to be no foul play and it's just an accident. But they did not want to apply that and they didn't want to apply that with the Nick Frost one the week before either.
Yeah, and I think we go back to last week and that one you could easily argue under those criteria to me that... Just because two guys clash heads, this isn't the Zan Sullivan, Caleb Tangitao situation. This is just two guys running at full tit, getting all of a sudden, bang, it just kind of happens, doesn't it?
Well, it's sort of like just squeezing it all into the middle. So if Sullivan's not going to get pinged for what he does, and then you've got this situation, then I just... Is everything just going to be yellow? There's either no accidents happening, and there's no red cards, and everything's yellow, or we actually have nuance in that different...
that occur on the paddock are going to have the application of the rules applied. That's what's meant to happen. It's an accident. It's an accident. What was he meant to do? Like, it's so quick and so violent. No one would want to put themselves in that position.
And this is where I keep going back, which confuses me about the Sullivan one, because I thought when I first saw this Brumbies Drew one, This is what rugby doesn't want on the big screen. It doesn't want these freeze-frame shots of two guys' heads smashing into each other. No parent at home wants their kid on the field with that happening to them.
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Chapter 7: How can refereeing standards be improved in rugby?
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. I don't agree with the call that, hey, it's so close and it's such a great play, he deserves the try. Look, if it's a knock on, it's a knock on. If he doesn't ground it, he doesn't ground it. There's no such thing as downward pressure. Those words aren't actually in the rule book.
Just grounded.
Even though all of us still use that.
Yeah. Did he get it? Well, what would be grounded if it's not downward pressure? It kind of has to be that. So I think he got it. I think he got it. It looked to me that he got it. And I think it's a good use of the TMO in this situation. They look at it in a number of different angles. I think that it's not just the benefit of the doubt. It appears to be that he gets a fingertip to it.
There's enough depression on it to warrant a try. And it's a good spectacle. I'm happy with it from a law standpoint that he grounds the ball.
Finally, 60 minutes, a yellow for Cahill, the Crusaders' lock for collapsing them all.
Range, hasty digging. Whistle goes. Number four collapsing.
Now, we might have to play this a couple of times to you because what you pointed out here is something really subtle. When you look at the mall to start with, the referee's, from our angle looking at it, on the right-hand side of the mall. He's on the blind side, yep. He shifts over to the other side.
And what he doesn't see is he doesn't see the force number four dragging a Crusaders player to the ground and collapsing it. Then he jumps back over to that side and sees Cahill doing it. He gets yellow carded.
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Chapter 8: What insights did Jeff share about rugby officiating challenges?
It goes from a Crusaders win to a force win because... Arguably from that moment, I mean, the force played a good game of rugby. Yeah, I thought they deserved to win the game. They deserved to win. But when you look at those moments and you say, well, actually, it was the force player who pulled the ruck down, collapsed the ruck. And they get the reward.
Who then comes in? The ref's over here. He's not looking at it. He's over here. He doesn't see it. The liner on that side isn't really in a position to make that call.
No, he can't. No, he's not going to come in on that.
The only person who can is upstairs.
Is a TMO going to come in and say... As I said, I had to watch that multiple, multiple times. There's a lot going on. In all the malls that we look at, I'm looking at potentially 10, 15 different players that are involved, be them in the mall or around the fringes. And you've got to look at each one of them. What are they doing? Well, how's the ref meant to do that?
How's the ref meant to in that moment? And he's on the blind. He's looking at something. He comes around. He's looking to see where the ball is at, and he can't. I don't know that the TMO should be getting involved in that because how long is it going to take for him to go through all of that? I don't have a solution here, mate. No, no. I think it's the referee's job to do it.
I think the bigger issue has been the attacking team infringing and not getting anything against them.
We've highlighted every week, and this is about week number eight we've been doing this, week number nine maybe we've been doing this, Jeff, and every week we're looking at one of these.
Yeah, I think it was round 10, wasn't it? Round 10? Yeah, round 10, but I think we've had nine. Oh, yeah, we've had nine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was the second week that we actually had it. So every week we're talking about a mall.
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