because a player of team A''commits a foul on a memember of team B.Surely when the referee awards a penalty then it should stand,any other foul play after that should result in the second offence being punished by the referee giving the player a warning or perhaps sent to the sin bin.i do not know of any other sport were this happens,definately not in football.

you play for the first penalty
PENALTYS are not over ruled
it was obvs a VERYVERYVERY bad ref

l am not sure of other games, but in rugby a foul play offence (usually punching or kicking an opponent) can over-ride an earlier lesser offence. It does not happen often, but it is not rare either.

One of the most recent examples was last night is NZ v Ireland match. An All Black (NZ) knocked the ball forward which normally results in a scrum (and possession) to the opponents (Ireland). However, after the ref blew the whistle for this, an Ireland player was deemed to deliberately hit an All Black is head with his arm. The referee deemed this was much more serious & warranted taking the scrum away from Ireland & instead awarded a penalty (and ultimately 3 points) to NZ.

It should be remembered that:

1/ The players know this is a possibility, and

2/ No-one holds a gun to their head & says ''Hit that opponent''.

Ignore the 1st answer for starters there completely wrong. Pentatlys can be reversed to the other team atr anytime for a coupel of reason, the 1st being a act of foul play deemed more serious than the penalty, continious backchat by the team awarded the penalty has been know to reverse a penalty now & then to. For example lets say team 1 is offside & the ref blows a penalty but the touch judge comes in & a player form team 2 has tackled a player from team 1 high then the penalty may be reversed depending on the severity of the tackle. this is reasonably common in all levels of the game.

But thats because football is a crap sport.

If a penalty is awarded to side A for eg a high tackle BUT someone from Team B takes exception and for example punches someone from team A then the ref has every right to reverse the penalty. It doesnt happen all the time but it happens even in international test matches.

agreed with Ryan C about the first response too, clearly whoever wrote that first response has no idea about rugby and the rules of rugby.