As straight red cards go, this one was pretty emphatic.
Liverpool were level at 1-1 with Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park when in the 17th minute, Lucas Neill was give his marching orders for a wild high lunge on Jamie Carragher.
Reds striker Milan Baros had already left the field on six minutes with a broken ankle and he was about to be joined in the ambulance by his defensive teammate. Neill's dangerous challenge not only resulted in an immediate dismissal for the Australian, but left Carragher with a broken leg.
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Carragher actually initially tried to play on and Liverpool went on to win the 2003 Premier League match 3-1, but manager Gerard Houllier was furious in the aftermath, calling out both Neill and Rovers boss Graeme Souness for a lack of concern following the incident.
Speaking two days later, the Frenchman told the ECHO: "When the game had finished I wish Graeme Souness had come up to me and said 'Sorry, it was a bad tackle'. But he did nothing. That really made me furious. I like to think of myself as a nice guy but in this case I am extremely unhappy with their behaviour during the incident, during the game and after the game.
"I think Neill's attitude was out of order. The first thing he should have done was go to the player, see how he was but he didn't."
Neill received a three match ban for his dismissal but Carragher was side-lined for six months - the longest stint he had had out of the game in his career. The injustice left Houllier calling for a longer ban.
He said: "I would like Neill to apologise. Blackburn have lost a player for three games and we have lost one for six months. You know as well as I do how important Carragher is to my team. In France there was a case where a player injured another with a bad tackle, which forced him out of the game for two months. The French FA banned the player responsible for the same length of time.
"I think Neill deserves more than three games for the way he behaved. I am gutted. To break a leg when a player is wearing shinpads takes something."
Souness - the former tough-tackling captain of Liverpool in the early 1980s side that swept all before them and an ex-manager of the Merseyside club himself - eventually offered sympathy and his own take on the events.
He said: "There was one bad tackle from 28 players in the whole of the 90 minutes, even if two players ended up with bad injuries. It wasn't a dirty game, it was a competitive game, before anyone starts to create a big thing out of it. There is no issue between me and Liverpool. I have seen the tackle again on TV and it looked like a sending off to me but it wasn't malicious.
"I, along with everyone at the club, is very saddened to hear the news and we wish Jamie Carragher - and Milan Baros - the speediest possible recovery."
Neill also offered up a comment of sorts, but stopped short of regretting the tackle. He said: "It is very sad for Jamie and I feel deeply sorry for him. No one likes to hear of any player being injured, especially for the long term, but there was absolutely no intent on my part - I simply went to play the ball. I can't really be sorry for the tackle because I was committed and I went in tough.
"I am an aggressive and committed player, that is part of my game, but I play it fairly. I pass on my best wishes to Jamie for a speedy recovery and hope at some stage to be able to go over to see him and shake his hand."
Given an extract from Carragher's 2008 autobiography, it is safe to assume that Neill probably never got round to shaking the Liverpool Academy graduate's hand. In fact, the southern hemisphere defender - who played 96 times for his country and had a four-month spell with Everton in 2009 - came a telephone call away from getting the coldest form of retribution as a result of his horror tackle.
Carragher explained: “My mates were ready to hunt him down if I gave the go-ahead. A few weeks later I received a phone call. ‘You won’t believe this, Jay. We’re in the Trafford Centre and Lucas Neill is walking straight towards us. What do you reckon?’
“Did I really want Neill to take a crack? ‘There’s only one problem,’ added the voice. ‘Little Davey Thommo is with him.’ That was that. I could hardly let one of my best mates, David Thompson, now a Blackburn player, become a witness to an assault.
“Besides, he’d have recognised the attackers. The impromptu mission was aborted and I sent a text to Thommo telling him Neill should give him a hug of thanks.”
In the days following the aborted ambush, news of the near-miss made it's way into the four walls of Ewood Park. Former Everton defender Terry Darracott was a coach at Blackburn at the time and sought to act as peace-maker with his fellow Scousers.
"(He) appealed to one of my friends to call the boys off. I agreed," added Carragher.
As fate would determine, the presence of ex-Liverpool midfielder David Thompson seemingly sparred Neill of what could have been an ugly act of retribution born out of the type of challenge seldom seen in the game today. But with a staggering 737 appearances across 17 years for the Reds, it is fair to say Carragher came back stronger after his frustrating spell out of the game.
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