Leroy Carter has finally spoken about the Cape Town touchline row with Cheslin Kolbe. He spent most of the answer talking about how long his arms are.
Two match officials were standing within a few metres of it. Neither of them reached for anything.
By Monday the clip was everywhere, New Zealand pundit Mark Watson was arguing that a double World Cup winner should have been sanctioned, and South African supporters were pointing out that nothing happens on a Test touchline without something happening first. Everybody had a verdict. Nobody had heard from the man who was actually in it.
Then Leroy Carter sat down in front of a microphone and started talking about the length of his arms.
Ten seconds that ran all week
Late in a Test South Africa won 33-26 to level the series, Cheslin Kolbe was taken into touch at DHL Stadium with bodies still scrambling over the ball. Carter dragged him across the ground and then hauled him up onto his feet. Kolbe came up angry and shoved him.
Two officials were close enough to intervene. Neither produced a card, Kolbe has not been cited, and the window on that is now shut. He finished the night as player of the match, having landed all seven of his kicks for 18 points on an evening a hamstring and an ankle had been expected to keep him out of altogether.
The officials moved on. The internet did not.
Leroy Carter’s answer: “I was surprised, hey”
Carter came out of the All Blacks Sevens programme, was nominated for World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year in 2023, and made his Test debut against South Africa in Wellington last year. He was asked about it on Inside The Black Jersey, the weekly show New Zealand Rugby launched this season on the All Blacks YouTube channel.
The question came from co-host Brad Weber, 18 Tests as an All Blacks halfback.
“Cheslin Kolbe did that little dog shot to you in the last couple of minutes. What were you saying to him?”
“I was surprised, hey. I didn’t realise he was going to get so angry, but no, it was actually probably the first time I’ve had a bigger reach than someone when I’m putting my hand up. I actually had a bigger reach, which is quite cool.”
Asked to describe being shoved in the face by one of the most decorated wingers alive, in the middle of the biggest series in the game, Carter’s strongest memory was that his own arm got there first.
Weber then offered a technical assessment.
“Your technique was fantastic, by the way. You really got in there strong. You came in hard. I was really proud of you, actually.”
Co-host George Harper asked whether he was qualified to judge. “Well, I’ve been in a few scuffles,” Weber said. “I haven’t finished too many, put it that way.”
Nobody in that studio thought they were discussing a citing.
Nobody drags a man off the deck by accident
Dragging a tackled opponent along the ground and up onto his feet is a coached job, and sevens is where it is coached hardest. In fifteens a slow reset costs a phase. In sevens it costs a try, so sevens players learn to spend the dead seconds after a tackle making the opposition’s next two seconds worse. Keep him engaged. Move him away from where he wants to be. Make him spend something.
Carter has spent his career inside that programme. Kolbe, at 32, has spent his career on the end of it.
Watch where the free hand goes next time, because that is the whole argument. Helping a man up means a hand under the shoulder and a step towards him. Moving a man means a fistful of jersey and a step away. On a wide broadcast angle those two look identical, and the footage that travelled the world this week was a wide broadcast angle. Which is precisely why it lasted all week instead of four minutes.
The bigger man, for once
Kolbe is 1.71m and 75kg. On most weekends he is the smallest man on the field he walks onto, and he has built a decade of highlight reels out of being underestimated for it. Sam Cane spent two years training beside him and watched the squad get bored of how good he was.
Carter is a converted sevens winger. He has never been the big one either. And the first time in his professional life that he found himself with the longer arm, he was holding the collar of the one man in world rugby smaller than him.
He knows that. It is why he said it, and it is why the answer landed better than any apology would have.
The case for citing Kolbe, put properly
None of which settles the question, and the people asking it deserve better than being told to relax.
Two officials stood within a few metres of an arm that a lot of viewers are certain was a closed fist. Provocation has never been a defence at a disciplinary hearing; at best it is mitigation once the charge is already proved. If that arm had belonged to a squad player from a Tier 2 nation in a Nations Championship dead rubber, the citing commissioner would have watched it twice. What a real disciplinary process looks like when one is actually opened is a matter of public record on this site, and it does not begin with anyone asking the victim whether he minded.
Fair enough on consistency. Weak on this one, for a simple reason. The only man on the field with standing to be aggrieved has gone on the record, on his employer’s own channel, describing it as the moment he discovered he had long arms.
They are both in it again on Saturday
Kolbe moves to fullback at FNB Stadium because Damian Willemse is injured, with Kurt-Lee Arendse coming onto the wing. Dave Rennie names his side on Friday and Carter should be in the 23 again after coming off the bench at Ellis Park and starting in Cape Town.
A winger and a fullback, two of the smallest men in the fixture, each now perfectly clear on how the other behaves once the ball is dead. New Zealand’s kickers will put the ball up at Kolbe in the 15-metre channel all night, and a body will arrive at the same moment as the ball every time. Some of those bodies will be Carter’s.
Which makes this a Saturday story rather than a discipline one.
Your turn
Two honest readings of ten seconds. Either a young winger did an ugly little professional job on an opponent who was already on the ground, and got exactly the response that behaviour invites. Or a 32-year-old with 18 points already in the bank swung an arm at a man’s head in front of two officials and walked away from it because of who he is. Every fixture, result and kick-off time in Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry is there for Saturday, when they are both back in it. Which of those two should the citing commissioner have looked at?
