Newcastle Falcons captain Callum Chick was red-carded after 25 minutes of their 15-14 Gallagher Premiership defeat to Exeter Chiefs; Dean Richards: “We’ve reached a moment in rugby where officials are making quick decisions rather than the correct decision.”
Last Updated: 20/02/22 6:41pm
Callum Chick was dismissed for this challenge on Josh Hodge
Dean Richards criticised the performance of the officials after his Newcastle Falcons side narrowly missed out on a win over Exeter.
Joe Simmonds’ late penalty ensured the visitors edged a tightly-fought contest 15-14 in poor conditions, but the game’s big moment came when Newcastle’s Callum Chick was red-carded for a high tackle midway through the opening half.At that point, the Falcons were leading 7-0, but close-range tries from Patrick Schickerling and Jack Innard either side of half-time turned the game on its head, putting the visitors 12-7 up. Richards felt the red card was a hasty call from Christophe Ridley and that his team could have won the game without the disadvantage. Chick (right) was sent off by referee Christophe Ridley Newcastle’s director of rugby said: “We’ve reached a moment in rugby where officials are making quick decisions rather than the correct decision.”If he gives us a yellow card [for Chick] then we accept it but you can’t make such a critical decision in the game as quickly as that and I think it’s had a huge impact on the game.”I was speaking to Rob Baxter and he was saying the same thing about how quick these decisions are being made.”If we had kept 15 players on the field then I think we would have competed differently in certain situations in the second half. We needed to decide if we should go with seven or eight men in the …