After the red and yellow, it's time for the orange card in French rugby

A new color is about to make its debut on the pitches of the first (Top 14) and second (Pro D2) French rugby divisions. During the 2025-2026 season, which begins Saturday, September 4 for the Top 14, referees will have a third disciplinary tool at their disposal: the orange card. Decided by World Rugby, the international rugby governing body, it will be tested for a year in all professional competitions before being eventually adopted permanently.

Until now, the referee had two options: the yellow card, synonymous with a temporary ten-minute suspension, and the red card, to permanently exclude a player, with no possibility of replacement. The orange card is intended as a response to so-called "borderline" situations, those where the degree of danger of an action is open to debate.

"The idea is to have an additional tool to resolve situations that divided opinion and the referees themselves," explains Mathieu Raynal, a former international referee who now heads the high-performance refereeing unit at the French Rugby Federation .

The system is being implemented without resorting to the so-called bunker protocol, used in some international competitions, where video referees can decide to convert a yellow card into a red card. The experiment will therefore be conducted directly on the pitch, with the head referees as the sole decision-makers.

In concrete terms, the player sanctioned with an orange card will leave the field permanently. His team will be reduced to fourteen players for twenty minutes, after which they will be able to replace him. As with a direct exclusion, the player concerned will subsequently be summoned before a disciplinary committee, which may impose a suspension.

The philosophy of the new sanction: to strengthen the consistency and clarity of refereeing decisions, without weakening the firmness of the supreme sanction, the red card. "Let's take the example of a tackle: the contact to the head is real, but the ball carrier has slightly changed his trajectory at the last moment. The fault exists, the danger is there, but not enough to justify a definitive exclusion. Conversely, it is too serious to be limited to a yellow. The orange then takes on its full meaning," explains Mr. Raynal.

However, refereeing officials are keen to point out that the red card retains its full significance. "The orange card is not a way out to avoid a red card," insists Mathieu Raynal . "It only applies to specific, sometimes ambiguous cases that leave referees and spectators divided."

As is often the case in French rugby, new developments arouse both curiosity and skepticism. Some fear additional complexity in a sport whose rules are already difficult for the general public to follow. Mathieu Raynal tempers this: "When you implement something, the first reaction is to criticize. Then you look at how it works. I believe this measure will bring more fairness and less controversy."