Playing a little bit of devils advocate here- Bismark was stationary when being tackled by an opponent, and Messam was the second man in to tackle him. He raises his arm in defence of himself/the ball, and this then makes contact with Messam's throat. The contact was caused partly by him raising his arm, and partly by Messam coming into the tackle in such an upright fashion.
If you think Bismark did this deliberately to try and hurt Messam? If so, then YC fine.
If you think Bismark did this recklessly, and as a result, caused undue danger to Messam? If so, then YC fine, if somewhat marginal.
However, I think one could suggest that Bismark's action was one that would occur many, many numbers of through the course of any game, and that attention was only drawn to it because Messam went down hurt. If the contact had been cetimetres to the left or right, there likely would have been no harm done, and none of us would even be aware of it. This isn't tiddlywinks, it is a brutal sport, and guys will take unintentional knocks sometimes that cause them damage.
Expanding upon this, have a look at the replay of Sam Caine's try (sadly, we dont have access to youtube here at work). After he has grounded it, Tony Woodcock dives into the pile to held drive him forward, however, in doing so, his first contact with the pile is striking Morne Steyn's head/shoulder with his shoulder (think a standard Bakkie's Botha cheap shot). I dont think Woodcock had any intention of hurting Steyn, and thankfully Morne bounced off and up quickly. However, if he had stayed down, we could have seen a similar TMO intervention as above resulting in Woodcock getting binned for an action that goes unobserved and unpunished the vast majority of the time.
Bottom line is that the YC for Bismark was ultimately correct within the laws of the game. He raised his arm and contacted a player in a sensitive area= dangerous play. But going back to Lyndon's comments in his article about 'accuracy v relevancy', was the second YC truly relevant, especially to those of us who knew the first YC was a crock?
