Matt Duffie has spoken of his shock at receiving the first yellow and red cards of his career and hopes that he, but also referee Jaco van Heerden, learns from the experience.
Duffie received two yellows and an automatic red in his team's 30-22 defeat to the Stormers at CapeTown. The first card was for allegedly being offside at a ruck, and came after van Heerden lost his patience (but without a warning), and the second came following a tackle on prone wing Cheslin Kolbe, who ducked to avoid the covering Duffie.
Neither probably warranted a yellow card and, with the second shown with about 20 minutes remaining, sank the Blues' hopes of victory and probably of making the playoffs. Duffie was cleared of any further sanction after fronting a disciplinary hearing.
Neither van Heerden nor television match official Shaun Veldsman have been allocated matches this weekend by Sanzaar.
"I've never had a yellow or a red card before in my career, so once I went back on the field I thought, 'well, the likelihood of that happening again is very rare so I'm just going to play my game... and I'm not going to second-guess myself'," Duffie told Radio Sport's D'Arcy Waldegrave today.
"I don't think the first should have been a yellow and I don't think the second should have been a yellow, but that's just the way things got called and sometimes that happens. It's disappointing because we went a long way for one game and to lose that game... I'm not saying we would have won that game, but to lose it... we would have gone a long way to winning it if a few calls had gone our way."
Duffie added: "To be honest, I hope that we learn from it and that he [van Heerden] learns from it."
Compounding matters for the Blues was the lack of a meaningful sanction during the match against Shaun Treeby for his high tackle on Piers Francis. And, as Francis mentioned, Blues loose forward Steven Luatua felt the full force of the Sanzaar's foul play committee when red carded and banned for four weeks for his high tackle on Tim Nanai-Williams in the Chiefs' victory at Waikato Stadium in round two.
"The frustrating thing is I thought we had drawn a line in the sand on that sort of stuff at the start of the season," Duffie said. "Steven Luatua was the first cab off the rank in terms of that... it's disappointing but I'm glad Piers is all right. It didn't look good at the time and I'm glad his health is all right."
