As expected, everyone walked away with their pride intact in the aftermath of the unusual ordering off by referee Mark Wilson of Cullinane captain Reggie Boult in Monday's schoolboy game against St Patrick's College development team.
You've got to give WRFU chief executive and resident peacekeeper Dale Cobb credit for once again deftly walking that delicate line by publicly backing the judgment of the official - and let's be clear, referees need to know they have full union support to do the most unenviable job in the game - while also mollifying a fuming Cullinane coaching staff so Boult can go forward now without a permanent stain on his reputation.
In full disclosure, I rang Cobb only minutes after the match where Boult was handed the harshest penalty possible given his crime was a different interpretation than Wilson was governing on the correct method of contesting the breakdown.
My view was a penalty was fair if being consistent, while a yellow card could be at least reasonably debated, but surely the red in the first offence by an individual was overkill given the automatic consequence of missing a fortnight of rugby as a result?
The Wellingtonians had hardly been protesting furiously about egregious Cullinane cheating, at least not the St Patrick's forward who moved to sympathetically pat Boult on the shoulder as he jogged off.
I have to contrast it to the April 12 premier club match I watched at Memorial Park where Gordon Ririnui sinbinned three Taihape players in the space of 12 minutes for pushing past acceptable levels while contesting the breakdown.
When I spoke to him afterwards, Ririnui informed me Taihape had fair warning to change tack, and they obviously didn't think after the first card was issued that he would keep on at them about it.
Punishment stayed squarely in the yellow category and because it was three different players, they were not elevated to the far more serious red - which is reserved either for the very worst of foul play or when one specific player has returned from his first yellow and continued to blatantly ignore the rules.
Before mudslinging got serious, because Boult's was a red card where everyone had to sort through nine pages of text book to review the merits, my suggestion to Cobb was to just let sleeping dogs lie. If you like, send out an email to all college team staff about what the WRFU considers proper contesting at the breakdown, but Boult had likely played precisely as he had been coached and "you couldn't hang the kid out to dry for that".
Hence a very tactfully written press release - Wilson was "correct, in law" but the red card was "more than sufficient" punishment.
Hopefully a little wiser, Boult is free to play in Cullinane's big upcoming game with Wanganui Collegiate and good luck to him.
Like officials, a columnist should not be afraid to spot flaws in his own work, although I am a little disappointed no knowledgeable rugby fans who read the Wanganui Chronicle called me out on my error last week. I said the Eden Park win by the 1994 French saw them join the 1937 South Africans and 1971 British Lions as the only teams to beat the All Blacks in a domestic test series.
That meant I had overlooked both the 1949 and the 1986 Wallabies, although it's noteworthy those series losses were not by full strength or at least unified All Black teams.
For reasons still baffling, the 1949 Wallaby tour was granted test status despite New Zealand's top players all being away on the ill-fated All Black tour of South Africa at the same time.
The third-string New Zealand XV was beaten 11-6 in Wellington on September 3 and then 16-9 three weeks later in Auckland.
That first "test" loss created the popular pub trivia question of "When was the time the All Blacks lost two games in one day?", as September 3 also saw the full-strength New Zealanders beaten 9-3 in Durban in the third test during the 4-0 whitewash by the South Africans.
It was a fractious All Black team from which the Alan Jones-coached Aussies lifted the Bledisloe Cup in 1986. Two teams really.
The Australians 13-12 win at Athletic Park on August 9 was against the historical anomaly known as the "Baby Blacks" - a young side asked to wear the test jersey while the country's 28 senior players were still serving two game suspensions for going on the infamous "Cavaliers" tour of apartheid South Africa.
Four days beforehand, the midweek Wallabies had beaten Wanganui 24-14 at Cooks Gardens, where Jones' diplomacy with the local media earned him few favours.
The returning Cavaliers were mixed in with a handful of remaining Baby Blacks for the second test on August 23, reversing the Wellington result with a 13-12 win at Carisbrook. However, they remained a disjointed unit, and were put down 22-9 in the third test on September 6 at Eden Park.