No time to go soft on neck roll

Why isn't the neck roll an automatic yellow card anymore? In fact, why isn't the neck roll refereed much anymore full stop?

I sat up and applauded last Sunday when Luke Pearce, below, probably the best referee out there now Wayne Barnes has retired, pinged Ireland three times against Italy for neck rolls. They are dangerous, cynical and need to be eliminated.

And the thing about a neck roll is that they are always deliberate, you can't accidentally neck roll an opponent, it requires an acquired judo technique, serious intent, and a bad attitude.

So why aren't they yellow? Players are automatically binned for the most accidental head or neck contact in the tackle situation when they are entirely innocent as per the Ollie Chessum “incident” early on for England against Wales.

Rugby must not go soft on the neck roll. The neck roll is just as dangerous as the plethora of yellow we see for marginal high tackles and being premeditated needs to be sanctioned more severely if anything. And on the subject of Pearce, another hat-tip for his insistence that the TMO show him the replay of Robbie Henshaw crawling across the line in real time and not slow motion.

Pearce, appreciating that rugby is not played in slow motion, did away with the technology and decided correctly that Henshaw had indeed been held initially and that the try should be scrubbed. Much more of this please.