Rugby Union

WR's judiciary system has form for this. In the Ireland - New Zealand series last year, the Irish forwards played a deliberate defensive tactic of tackling upright, and trying to hold the NZ ball carrier up until the referee called tackle which gave their defensive line more time to set.

Inevitably one of those tackles went wrong in Wellington when Porter attempted this against Retallick and caused a head clash that not only concussed Retallick out of Rugby, it also broke his cheek and meant he didn't play for quite some time.

Wayne Barnes only gave a Yellow card claiming that it was a soaking or passive tackle, so wasn't high danger. Then the judiciary agreed.

This despite the whole point of carding head contact was to try to encourage players and coaches to get the tackle height lower, and in particular remove the potentialy for head clashes (because when 2 heads clash in a tackle, that's double the chance of a concussion).

On top of all that; I think most international rugby fans would buy my contention that like the Sexton incident, if this were a player from somewhere else, say Argentinian, or a Pacific Island player they would not be receiving this kind of leniency. Leniency which comes after the player in question has been repeatedly carded & cited for high shots exactly like this one, and which after going to tackle school for the last citing has not changed their technique at all.