There were a couple of huge hits made at the weekend. One, De Wet Barry’s shoulder on Mathew Tait, ended in a red card for the assailant. The other, a hefty smash from James Haskell on Leicester’s Jordan Crane, went unpunished. In fact, Wasps were awarded a penalty for a Tigers infringement in the same passage of play.

So, in the mood to see if there were any other huge smashes out there we could compare these latest efforts to, we trawled the YouTube archives to bring you a few monster collisions, some legal, others not so, but all that make decent viewing when you’re supposed to be working on a Monday afternoon.

Quinnell leaves his mark

It was the Lions series that got away from our boys in 2001 when the Australians overhauled a 1-0 series deficit to break British and Irish hearts, but Scott Quinnell left Stephen Larkham with more than a series victory to remember with this late shoulder.

All-Irish dust up

The Magners League often gets derided for a lack of effort on behalf of the players accused of having an eye on the Six Nations of the Heineken Cup, but no one’s commitment could have been faulted in this Ulster v Munster clash, when a late hit on Femi Mafi sparked a bit of a dustup.

He got there as quick as he could

Andrew Sheridan brings a lot to any side he plays for, but it has seldom been said that pace is one asset. Perhaps if he had been a couple of yards quicker, Thinus Delport wouldn’t still be looking for his marbles on the Sixways turf.

Wasp sting

This is a classic. Wasps’ defence coach Shaun Edwards gave a boisterous pre-match interview defending his side’s hard but fair defensive aggression, then less than a minute into their Heineken Cup final against Leicester last season, Josh Lewsey does this to Frank Murphy. Stuart Barnes didn’t like it, but the ref saw nothing wrong.

Surf’s down

Lewsey gets his second outing in our big hit homage for this memorable munching of Aussie hothead Mat Rogers, who reportedly had a bit of bother paddling put on his surfboard for a while after this pummelling.

Like only Jonny can

Danny Cipriani seems to possess a lot of skills that Jonny Wilkinson wishes he still had, but one thing the new kid on the block will probably never be as good at is smashing people into as many pieces as England’s golden boot could. Watch again as he sends Emile N’tamack back into the middle of last week.

One of Brian’s best

No list of big hits is complete without a mention of the Chiropractor. Brian Lima made a career out of rearranging people’s bones, so here’s the surly Samoan at his best, giving Derek Hougaard a large dose of his favourite medicine.