All Blacks great Andrew Mehrtens would like to see World Rugby take a closer a look at the game’s wind-up merchants after England lock Jonny Hill escaped the attention of the judiciary this week.
Wallabies second rower Darcy Swain was banned for two weeks after losing his cool and headbutting Hill in a fiery first Test at Perth’s Optus Stadium.
Hill had successfully baited the less experienced Swain by pulling his hair and shoving him in the face with two hands off the ball.
Watch Wallabies vs England live on 9Now and every match ad-free and in ultra clear 4K on Stan Sport
Hill was yellow carded in the 30-28 loss but is free to play in Saturday’s second Test at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium.
“It’s absolutely understandable from a human nature perspective that Darcy Swain reacts like that,” Mehrtens said on Stan Sport’s Between Two Posts.
“Yes, he lost his cool, can we condone that, absolutely not. It’s a headbutt, he’s got to go off. Jonny Hill played the role well, he was abrasive, he went for the hair.”
READ MORE: McEnroe in shock as Kyrgios goes to ground
READ MORE: Unpopular tactic gifts Djokovic comeback win
READ MORE: Bulldogs half rejects huge offer to leave
https://twitter.com/StanSportRugby/status/1544123329539461121?s=20&t=PQLQrV5nWwJb0b04M0UxiA
Mehrtens then offered some typically irreverent observations on the brouhaha.
“What I liked in NFL earlier in the season, I think we saw penalising for ‘unnecessary roughness.’ And I reckon there’s room to come in and go ‘unnecessary dickhead-ness.’
“It happens a lot in France,” Mehrtens explained.
Sean Maloney and Andrew Mehrtens are back for a special episode from The Steyne in Manly. The duo review all the northern versus southern hemisphere clashes in the July series, as well as keeping an eye on the exciting Pacific Nations Cup in Fiji
“If you play in France there’s always a perpetrator who will grab something he’s not supposed to, whether it’s someone’s hair, someone’s eyeballs, someone’s junk, whatever. They’ll grab it and then he slides off into the background and it all blows up.
“Suddenly there’s a couple of red cards, three yellows and the bloke who started it all – this is not what Jonny Hill did – but the bloke who started it gets off scot free.
“There’s got to be a way to go ‘you know what, this is really inflammatory action, unnecessary.’ Yes, a yellow card in the context of the game but maybe they look at it a little bit closer at the judiciary.”
For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!