On social media this week, I said I was glad I’m retired now. Quite simply, it’s getting to the point where I’m scratching my head - not always at how some refereeing decisions are being arrived at but the citing and disciplinary process that follows.

A lot of rugby fans understand the laws of the game very well, but if I’m struggling to understand decisions, as someone who has refereed at all levels in the game, I can’t imagine what it must be like for players, coaches and spectators as well.

I’ve felt this way for a while but two major talking points from last weekend’s games in particular have left me puzzled.

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The first involves the new Wales captain, Dafydd Jenkins, who was shown a yellow card during Exeter’s win over Bayonne for a high tackle. Honestly, I’m not sure what he could have done any different - there was nothing more he could do. I will be the first to support being strong on foul play and player safety but I just can't see how this one reaches the foul play threshold, let alone a yellow card.

He's a big guy, 6ft 7in and he’s going down as low as anybody that height can, while the ball carrier is actually falling down into him. He couldn’t have done anything to change what was going to happen at the last minute. For me, while there is head contact, there’s no foul play there, no recklessness, it’s purely a rugby collision.

It’s nobody’s fault, and it should be played on - but the referee and TMO came to the conclusion that it should be a yellow card, leaving me scratching my head at how they arrived at that decision.

The second incident occurred in Bristol Bears’ defeat to Connacht, when Bristol prop Josh Caulfield trod on the head of Finlay Bealham. The incident divided rugby, with some people thinking that it was reckless and warranted the red card he was shown, while plenty of others argued there was no foul play.

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If you’re looking at that and thinking he did nothing wrong, he’s come in to ruck out and at the last minute, something’s happened, then you would view it as an accident, no recklessness, no foul play and therefore no sanction. I would disagree with that opinion myself - I thought Caulfield’s clearing out motion was very unnatural - but it would at least make sense.

But what has left me scratching my head is not the referee's decision, but the judiciary process deciding there was foul play yet still overturning the red card that was shown. How can that happen? If they believe that it was reckless and it was foul play, how can they arrive at any other decision than upholding the red card?

At the moment, these sort of decisions are really confusing for everyone who is tuning in to watch a game of rugby. Even as a referee, I’m watching games and seeing decisions given or not given that are not going the way I would expect from the way the game should be refereed and the laws that should be applied.

Of course, there are always going to be incidents that are in that grey area, where some will think it deserves a red and others argue it is only worthy of a yellow card. Those are open to interpretation and that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But if you’re agreeing that an incident is foul play, how the hell you can land at that not being worthy of a red card is beyond me. That is not a refereeing issue, that is a judicial process issue.

The game is at a crossroads when it comes to these sort of decisions, which are proving confusing for spectators and could also endanger player welfare.

You’ve got to look at the whole process, not just refereeing sanctions, which are mostly correct, but the judiciary and citing process that follows. At the moment, it’s spoiling the game because people just don’t know what decisions are going to be given.

The issue I believe is that there are simply too many people involved in these decisions. If a group of 10 Wales fans all sat down to pick their starting XV for the Scotland game, there may be one or two identical line-ups but chances are there would be some differences between them all.

Refereeing is no different. You have the referees, assistant referees, TMO, referee coach, referee performance reviewer and referee manager, while you have several other people involved in the judiciary process too. For me, particularly at the professional end of the game, it all needs to be streamlined.

Of course, it shouldn’t be the case that there becomes a dictatorship making these decisions. But that streamlining needs to happen sooner rather than later for consistency reasons.

More people involved means more inconsistency - and it’s that inconsistency that’s spoiling our game. Something has to be done.