MARTIN Whitcombe reckons that referees have been handed Mission Impossible by the new directives concerning high tackles.

Bradford & Bingley's director of rugby, who queries whether the punishment for offences should be ramped up in the middle of a season, says that the chief losers in this scenario are the referees themselves.

He points out that at level six there is no TMO for the referee to consult with or panel touch judges.

The referee is very much on his own in deciding whether a tackle made contact with the head or the upper chest, which can be a marginal decision that he has to make in a split second.

The Bees lost skipper Tom Booth and Richard Tafa to yellow cards between the 50th and 53rd minutes last weekend for high tackles in what Whitcombe called a full-blooded, top-of-the-table North One East contest at Pocklington.

Conceding that Pocklington deserved to win, Whitcombe writes in his programme notes for Saturday's clash at home to leaders West Hartlepool: "It was thrilling, exciting and a whole other basketful of adjectives, but it was never dirty - all round it was a credit to the game of rugby played at this level.

"My problem is that in what appeared to me to be an ideal rugby environment the teams collected five yellow cards between them in a game where there was hardly anything which we might have thought of as foul play as recently as Christmas.

"Please, let me make it 100 per cent clear, my issue is not with the referee. He has the job of enforcing the laws of the game, and World Rugby's new directives on high tackles that came into force on January 3 made the poor official's already difficult job nigh-on impossible, and I believe it is going to play havoc with our game below the professional elite.

"Rugby is a contact sport. We all play because we love the game, we love the physicality on the pitch and the company of our team-mates afterwards, but where do we go from here?

"Is there any point in preparing a team anymore? What is World Rugby going to do in six months' time when we have had every one tackling 'downstairs' and coming into contact with opposition players knees and boots and have doubled the amount of head injuries?

"At one stage of the game we were down to 13 players, and this just happened to coincide with Pocklington scoring two quick tries and the arguably the game was gone – if the dangerous play rule is enforced at every collision, are we going to end up with as many players stood on the side as are on the field playing?"

Whitcombe added: "I videoed the Saracens v Exeter game on Saturday and watched it on Sunday morning. "I was surprised when I saw Brad Barritt initiate a head-high tackle, helped by his team-mate Richard Barrington, on Exeter lock Geoff Parling, who was knocked out and carried off on a stretcher.

"Now under the new interpretation of the regulations it was hard to argue against both players receiving red, but no - only Richard Barrington had to make the long walk, leaving the instigator on the field.

"It didn't do much for the game when we then hear via the pundits that Sarries going down to 13 and therefore potentially ruining a good game could have been the reason Barritt didn't walk.

"This contrasts starkly with Tom Booth's card in our game, where I could argue that Tom's ten minutes for the slightest contact with a Pocklington forward's face had a big impact on the outcome of our game yet no-one associated with our opposition saw anything 'wrong' with the clash between the players.

"I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that the most important thing in our game is player safety and I don't think you will find anybody in rugby who would disagree with that.

"But I am really worried that the talking points of the game will no longer be about the flying winger who dives in at the corner or any other good passages of play, but will become all about the decisions made in a split second by the officials and one man's interpretation of how the guidelines should be implemented."