How much is a red card worth odds-wise?

and is worse in league than union

@northanlite..not trolling - I was firmly in the rugby camp but was challenged. Thanks.

True benny, although Welsh did drop the ball over the line at one point and are not a particularly good rugby team at best.

Rugby League must be the worst hit by a red card - very very tough to play 12 against 13, especially as in league the defensive line is always spread out with very few ways to slow things down and create a pile up. Then union, then football I would have thought. It's the structural nature of rugby that makes the loss of a player a lot harder to swallow - i.e. if it's 6 against 5 out wide in any amount of space it should be a walk in for the team in possession. Obviously it doesn't always work like that, but the theory is sound.

Plenty of evidence to the contrary though I imagine. I remember maybe the first really big loss I took was a Premiership match between Gloucester and Bath. Bath had a man sent off late in the first half, Gloucester, at home, should have walked it from there on but their fly-half, Mercier, just kept hoofing the thing away. He finally passed the ball with about 2 mins left and Gloucester ran in a try from their own half to take the lead. Then they threw it away through stupidity in the last seconds. I was a tad vexed.

So I suppose it makes little difference in the end if your opponents are too dim to take advantage, but the potential advantage should be greater in rugby than in football with a man advantage.