The Telegraph Podcasts.

Hello and welcome to Brian Moore's full contact in association with the Telegraph. I'm Brian Moore.

I'm joined in the studio today by the Telegraph's rugby correspondent Mick Cleary. Hello Mick.

Hello Brian. Well, we're talking to George Shooter, formerly of Leicester. So let's leave the Leicester

Newcastle game and talk about James Haskell, who's called rugby a pretty boring sport

after his yellow card against Saints. I'm not sure where he's coming from here. I think, and he

also said, I think immediately a post-match interview I heard when I was at London Irish, but heard

it down the line of, called it pathetic, which is, no, I think he was on about this thing about high tackles and being, what he considered it, gone soft in being too officious about high tackles.

Now, the thing is, you've got massive sort of worry and concern about concussion issues compared to when you played in terms of what is blown up and what's not blown up,

there's no question.

It's much more rigorous, much more pleased.

And I've watched games where you think, crikey, how has he given a penalty?

And often a yellow card for that.

But I guess you can't have a drive to try and reduce head injuries and not be, are they being

zealous about this, or not being certainly very, very hard and harsh on making sure the arm is low

and doesn't make contact with the head. So there will be a bit of a gray area and there will be a

bit of an area where you think, actually, that's a bit harsh, that yellow card.

But if that's the objective of it, which I believe it is, then you've got to back it.

You know, I come back to this.

Tacklers and players, they can go in at any height they want.

And if they choose to go in higher, then maybe is sensible and they get towards the borderline,

if a referee is harsh or they say gets it wrong, they knew that before they made the challenge.

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