Introducing "excessive force" as a prohibition in fending is problematic as "excessive" is entirely subjective and non technical.
Punching and striking are specific offences. If a hand-off amounts to one of those, then the fact that it was an attempted hand-off is irrelevant. It is wrong to say that a hand-off cannot lead to a red Card.It's not just new wording ,OB !
WR specifically say it's a new Law , and specifically say it's a lesser offence than striking .. see my post #7 above !
"Dangerous", "intentional", "advantage", "immediately", "material"... if you don't want to make subjective judgements, refereeing rugby is going to be very hard.
Punching and striking are specific offences. If a hand-off amounts to one of those, then the fact that it was an attempted hand-off is irrelevant. It is wrong to say that a hand-off cannot lead to a red Card.
To me it is obvious that there is a full range of possibilities ranging from a perfectly legal hand-off to a very blatant Red Card offence. The top end is already covered by punching/striking. The bottom end was covered by the addition to the old Law 7. The mid-level sanction is now covered by the new law.?? But World Rugby themselves say that offences under this new Law , hand off with excessive force , cannot lead to a RC ...
Scratch away! I think you should use the same criteria as for any other offence - your judgement. If it was not worth a Red Card, you may decide to award a Yellow Card, or even just a penalty. Surely that makes good rugby sense?OB.. can you describe an example that falls into the mid level .. ie is not covered by the Law on punching / striking , but nevertheless is worth a PK
That's where most of is are scratching our heads