{"id":485415,"date":"2026-05-15T04:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T04:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/485415\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T04:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T04:10:13","slug":"days-of-players-being-sent-off-for-thuggery-are-in-past-says-clayton-mcmillan-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/485415\/","title":{"rendered":"Days of players being sent off for thuggery are in past, says Clayton McMillan \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Munster<\/a> head coach Clayton McMillan<\/a> said the days of rugby players being sent off for thuggery are gone and that most disciplinary decisions now involving red cards are for technical fouls.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s pleased that hooker Diarmuid Barron, who had a yellow card upgraded to a 20-minute red card<\/a> in the defeat to Connacht<\/a> last weekend, had the decision rescinded by a disciplinary committee.<\/p>\n

The decision proved costly for Munster. They were trailing 7-0 when the incident with Connacht hooker Dylan Tierney-Martin happened and by the time replacement hooker Lee Barron came on at the end of the red card, the deficit was out to 21-0.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main ones that you see really are head on head contact \u2013 the days where acts of thuggery were red-card incidents; those are long gone now and what we\u2019re seeing is just people get technique slightly wrong and the only way to improve that is through repetition and training best practice and hopefully that\u2019s what evolves,\u201d McMillan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to just coach best practice. There are no coaches in here that sort of coach to try to push the letter of the law or bend the rules.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Retiring Munster duo may make final Thomond Park bow against the Lions<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cCoach best practice and in a dynamic situation there are just always going to be incidents that either put yourself or somebody else in danger and we all know what the consequences of those are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diarmuid Barron has been selected on the bench for the crunch United Rugby Championship<\/a> (URC) clash against the Lions on Saturday evening and McMillan welcomed the outcome of disciplinary decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know moments that referees have to make a decision, on and by their own admission they\u2019ll get some right and they\u2019ll get a few wrong, but that\u2019s the game,\u201d the New Zealander said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd as I said post game last week that\u2019s a kind of reflection of our game that can be complicated at times and continuously searching of ways to make it simpler for them, simpler for players and easier for people sitting in the stands to understand as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s some ongoing challenges, but I think in the judiciary hearing they came to the right conclusion. We accepted that there was some foul play on our part, but there\u2019s certainly no maliciousness in that and that we feel sorry for the player who received an injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut thankfully we didn\u2019t start with the injury as the reason why we got to a red card. It was effectively a dynamic situation that went a little wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMillan also welcomed the return from injury of Jack Crowley<\/a> for this clash.<\/p>\n

\u201cJack\u2019s integral part of the side as everybody knows and he\u2019s just really comfortable in his own skin; his game makes others around him look better and feel better through his presence, through his calmness, through his clear communication.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s great to have him back and you know we\u2019ve got JJ [Hanrahan] there as backup if required, but he\u2019s trained really well this weekend and we\u2019ll need him.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Munster head coach Clayton McMillan welcomes independent review into province\u2019s governanceOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Munster head coach Clayton McMillan said the days of rugby players being sent off for thuggery are gone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[23202,23199,18,19,17,73724,12311,132,42271],"class_list":{"0":"post-485415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-clayton-mcmillan","9":"tag-connacht-rugby","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-jack-crowley","14":"tag-munster-rugby","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-united-rugby-championship"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116576637856313586","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}