GARRY RINGROSE found his week back at ‘school’ interesting — but he hopes not to be returning any time soon.
The Ireland centre is available for Saturday’s Six Nations clash with Italy after serving a two-game ban for his red card against Wales.
The 30-year-old was dismissed in the 34th minute of the 27-18 victory in the Principality Stadium for what was deemed to be a high and dangerous tackle on Dragons’ Ben Thomas.
Ringrose’s three-game suspension — he also missed a URC match for Leinster — was reduced by one game after he agreed to undertake World Rugby’s Coaching Intervention Programme — more often called ‘tackle school’.
So what did a player with 199 games for club and country under his belt learn about tackling?
He said: “I clearly need to keep working on it. The tackle school week was an interesting process to go through.”
The disciplinary procedures may be used at times to throw the book at wrongdoers, but players attending tackle school are encouraged to educate themselves.
Ringrose said: “You’re going back over the incident, what I believe as a player I could have done differently in the situation. I would have naturally worked quite closely with Simon Easterby as the defence coach and worked closely with Andrew Goodman, who was particularly helpful last week.
“So it was designing little drills to break down the incident a bit into segments and then that kind of evolved into re-enacting effectively what happened and being acutely aware of what I can do differently in that situation.
“I was on the pitch doing it myself, breaking it down and doing drills and then re-enacting the scenario and trying to anticipate what I didn’t anticipate on the day in Cardiff.
“I was breaking it down into different elements so I can do better, and what Goody thinks I could have done better. And then explaining why you’re doing the drill.
“So I had Tommy O’Brien and Ciarán Frawley over the couple of days on a tackle bag helping me out.
“All of that through the week was videoed and passed on to World Rugby, who then reviewed it.”
Ringrose said he found the whole process fascinating, as the group took on board the mitigating reasons for what he regards as a mistimed rather than malicious challenge.
And although he accepted the charge of foul play, he said he was still a bit surprised that his initial yellow card in Cardiff was upgraded to a red following a bunker review.
Ringrose continued: “The incident itself, there was no malice or intent behind it.
“It was just something that didn’t go right at the time.
“There’s a bit of a grey area. Maybe that’s not the right word but in some incidences where there is a matter of interpretation, it can be interpreted as a yellow or a red.
“At the time I thought it was going to be a yellow card.
“But reviewing and going back into the disciplinary process, I was pretty keen to admit that it was act of foul play.
“Then I made my points and explained exactly what was going through my head to the panel.”
Ringrose — who missed the Blues’ 42-24 URC win over Cardiff — is eager to help Ireland bounce back from last Saturday’s 42-27 defeat to France.
He added: “It was a tough, tricky process to go through but a good learning curve. I’m motivated and excited to attack the week.”
