Steward red card

He started off by saying that the first thing you have to do is take the emotion out of your thinking. i.e. If your English your going to say yellow at worst if your Irish your going to say red every day of the week. This was clear with Woodward saying rugby incident and O'Driscoll saying red. You also have to remove '14 v 15 spoils a game' from your thinking also - these thoughts just get in the way of making the right decision.

He then went on to say that the ref has to deal with the facts as he sees them in the moment.  Peyper  felt that Steward could have done more to pull out of the contact. Having made that initial assumption, Nigel then went on to explain the series of facts as described by Peyper that led to the red card decision.  Our Nige said that given that thinking process it was difficult to argue against the red card.

Nige then went on to say that he could also understand the thinking that many had that Steward could NOT have done more to avoid the contact.  And if that's your starting point then the facts lead you to a yellow at worst and maybe even just a penalty.

He then went on to say that people would accuse him of siting on the fence but he said No - the reality is that you will always get these decisions that a ref makes in a smouldering cauldron of a game and there will always be debate in the cold light of day.

I thought that was an excellent summary.