BY JOHN DAVIDSON
Samoa coach Ben Gardiner has questioned the sin-binning of his centre Junior Pauga in the second Test against England, describing the incident as a “freak accident”.
Pauga was yellow-carded in the first half for a head impact on John Bateman. Samoa conceded three tries in the 10 minutes that Pauga was off the field.
Asked about the card after the game, Gardiner said: “In any game a sin-binning is going to have an impact on the game. As an average across the NRL and Super League, a sin-bin is worth two tries. So it’s pretty crucial.
“I thought that he [Bateman] was falling, at first I thought it was for a crusher tackle. Junior was told he was sin-binned for a high tackle.
“He made impact with the player with his hip, not his arm. I understand we’re trying to remove head contact, but accidental head contact like that I haven’t seen that penalised in the past.
“It was a freak accident. Junior should have been given the benefit of the doubt. The player basically got up and played on. No problem at all.
“The sin-binning impacts how you play, like when you have a place in you got to make additional adjustments to make sure that you can defend first more and defense wins matches at the end of the day.
“So when you need to change the system and to make sure that players can defend in a position, so that we’ve got the edge covered. For example, obviously, it’s a centre it’s not just a middle that you can rotate around as the guy that plays there is an important position. “
“I don’t want everything to be about the sin-binning. At the end of the day England were excellent again today, Herbie Farnworth had another great game.
“It’s just a freak incident that puts a bit of a downer on the game.”
