Richie McCaw has had his fair share of infringements since his debut as an All Black in 2001. Here are just some of them from the past few years.

Richie McCaw had played almost 50 test matches before he was shown a yellow card. Australian loosie Michael Hooper has seen five in his 46 matches.

So Hooper is clearly more ill-disciplined, right? Wrong.

In his last 10 test starts, on average, Hooper has conceded one penalty per match. McCaw was pinged for an average of two penalties per game in his last 10 tests.

MATTHEW IMPEY/ PHOTOSPORT Richie's been a naughty boy.

As well as Hooper, McCaw also concedes more penalties per match than South Africa's Schalk Burger, France's Thierry Dusautoir, England's Chris Robshaw and the Welsh flanker Sam Warburton.

PENALTIES

McCaw's higher penalty rate stretches back at least as far as the last Rugby World Cup in 2011. However, his offending seems to have gotten worse.



In his 40 test starts since winning the World Cup, McCaw has averaged 1.48 penalties per match. In his last 20, the rate has increased to 1.7 and in his last ten, to 2 penalties per match.



Burger (0.83), Warburton (0.66), Dusautoir (0.64) and Robshaw have all conceded less than one penalty per test match start since 2011.



And unlike McCaw, they have all slightly improved their discipline, conceding fewer penalties per match in their more recent test starts.

YELLOW CARDS

Although he concedes a lot of penalties, McCaw is rarely yellow-carded.

Before he was binned for tripping Argentina's Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe on Monday morning (NZ time), McCaw had been carded twice in his 143-test career.

His card rate of 0.02 per match is much lower than Hooper (0.11) or Burger, who has six yellow cards in 80 matches (0.08).

In fact, despite being the most-capped test match rugby player of all-time, there are 45 players who have been given more yellow cards than McCaw (yellow cards have only been formally shown in test matches since 2000).

There are 16 loose forwards who have more yellow cards and 17 other loosies with the same number as McCaw.

ABs v Argentina: Your man of the match Share your stories, photos and videos. Contribute

Warburton has been shown only one yellow card in his 58 tests.

Robshaw (40 tests) and Dusautoir (77) have no yellow cards.

Comments on this article have been closed