Rugby: Sonny Bill Williams' red card a terminal blow

All Black Sonny Bill Williams is shown the red card. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Sonny Bill Williams has long been a divisive figure. He's a player who has taken much of traditional New Zealand outside of its comfort zone, asked people to accept his differences.

It has been a long slow battle for him to convert those who haven't jumped straight on his bandwagon and probably now, he can just about abandon all hope he'll become a universally accepted national treasure.

Isn't going to happen because the cold, sober analysis of the second test is that Williams dealt his side a terminal blow with his act of ill-discipline on 24 minutes.

Not even the world's best side can conjure victory when they are asked to play for so long with a man short.

The Lions deserved their win - it can't be taken away from them and they won't care it was against a 14-man team.

But objectivity can't skirt the red card and pretend it wasn't the single defining moment that changed everything.

What Williams was doing...only he will know. While there have been plenty of worse things committed in test arenas that have gone unpunished, he can't feel any raging injustice at his fate.

What he did was wildly clumsy. Perhaps if he'd managed to get his arms wrapped around Anthony Watson, the punishment would have been less severe...maybe a yellow.

He didn't though and that left him vulnerable to the ultimate sanction. Whether there was any intent or not, to not use any arms and to be so upright in the contact area was certainly ill-advised because this is the new age of zero tolerance when it comes to tackles where heads are targeted.

The edict from World Rugby has been loud and clear: hit the head in the tackle and face the consequences. Research has been unambiguous - the tackle is where most concussions occur and if the tackler is high and upright, the chance of the tackled player suffering a brain injury is 75 per cent higher than when technique is text book.

"I think the impact was pretty obvious," said All Blacks coach Steve Hansen. "If the ref says it is a red card then you don't have any say in it.

"It was one of those things that could have been a yellow or red but he chose it to be red. There is no point whining about it.

"Sonny didn't use his arms and put himself at risk so and he collected young Anthony's head and we don't want that so it was off you go boy."

Williams will now have to face a judicial hearing at 5.00pm on Sunday, where he will be able to explain himself and try, if nothing else, to reduce the severity of his inevitable suspension.

It's unlikely in the extreme he'll be available to play in the series decider and the All Blacks will be facing the prospect of selecting a youthful and inexperienced midfield in Ngani Laumape and Anton Lienert-Brown.

That won't necessarily overly concern them as the more pressing challenge is going to be restoring the right attitude and desire to ensure that whatever else happens at Eden Park, the All Blacks start and finish better than they did in Wellington.

"I didn't think we started the game well," said Hansen. "They controlled the first 15-20 minutes of the game. And we didn't control the last 15 or so minutes. It is difficult because we didn't have the opportunity to do the things we wanted to do because we were a man down.

"I am extremely proud of our blokes against such a good side. They have proven that to everybody. Congratulations to the Lions. They worked and worked their way back into the game and get over the top of us in the last five or 10 minutes."