No room for it.

You may have noticed in recent weeks that certain ‘football’ trends are slowly beginning to creep into rugby, and the world’s leading referee Nigel Owens wants it stamped out. Football players have been known to demand players be yellow-carded, and we’ve seen a few instances of this in rugby in recent weeks.

On Saturday former All Black Ma’a Nonu demanded Wayne Barnes issue a yellow card, and while the English referee dealt with is superbly, the feeling is it shouldn’t be coming to this in the first place. There’s simply no room for it in the game.

It’s not the first time it’s happened, and it most certainly won’t be the last if something is not done. Owen’s recently appeared on Brian Moore’s Full Contact Podcast on the Daily Telegraph website and said he and the other senior referees have discussed it.

“This is something we certainly don’t want to see in the game.

“It’s something we as a group of referees have discussed and agreed to stamp out.

“We’ll all have our certain ways of dealing with whether you penalise the guy who asks for the yellow card, where you call him over speak to him like Wayne (Barnes) did very well , and give him that warning, or do you give that yellow card and reverse the penalty decision?

“Every referee will deal with it in the way he feels appropriate.”

“Nobody wants to see that creeping into the game.

“Referees, everyone involved in sport and in general if you ask the players, they will say the same thing.

“We know we need to make sure that doesn’t become part of the game, because it is starting to creep in.

“The boundaries are being pushed and we need to keep to those true values of rugby I feel.”

Do you agree with Owens. Is this becoming a problem? Sound off in the comments.