There’s been a lot of press about fingers in the eyes over the past few months. There’s been a lot of press about faking things. Combine the two and you’d be in real trouble, wouldn’t you?

The two are already being combined in a sinister little sideshow on a more and more frequent basis, a part of another scourge to rugby that needs to be eradicated at source: that of the con artist.

In a cracking weekend of Heineken Cup action with cross-channel clashes and one-score games aplenty, things are bound to boil over. The fist will, on occasion, be thrown. Boots will be stamped rather than raked. The fine line between the legal and the illegal, the physical and the thuggish, will be crossed. It is the nature of sport to do that, and with rugby’s combative nature it is going to be more brutal in nature than other sports. That’s the edge we love.

The judiciary and governing bodies are going about cleaning such things up. The plethora of cameras picks up any transgression at any time, including the secretion of a blood capsule in a sock fifty metres off the ball. An innocuous punch, such as the hardier player would normally simply laugh at, is now punishable with a two-week suspension. Some tackles are penalised, it seems, simply for being too hard – see Matt Banahan’s yellow card against Stade Français on Sunday.

So, as though their hearing is in a kangaroo court, players caught are seeking to get their mitigation in early, on the pitch if possible.

Thus it is that on at least two occasions the past weekend we saw an exchange of pugilistic pleasantries on the pitch, broken up by the referee’s whistle and then mitigated by players furiously protesting that they, too, had been gouged, or stamped on, or punched first or… whatever it was, it was a far worse crime than the fisticuffed retaliation just meted out.

Then there’s the theatricals. Players being obstructed off the ball and falling to ground with arms raised to the heavens or slumping to the floor as though cracked round the head with a crowbar. Remember Olivier Azam’s milking of Tom James’ idiocy in last year’s Heineken Cup classic? James might have got a red card anyway, Azam made damned sure. That sort of thing.

Back to last weekend and I recall at least two incidents of fights breaking out and being broken up, and with one protagonist or the other waving his hand over his face and screaming his eyes had been attacked. True or not – and the cameras can’t pick up everything – it’s not adherent to the dignity with which our beautiful game is supposed to be played. Even an on-pitch bust-up should be honest.

Accountability, the streamlining and consistency of disciplinary measures, the cleaning up act of the sport, these are all good influences, all a part of making the sport more professional. Gouging, a disgraceful act which has long been buried in the amateur depths, is being weeded out, as are other acts of brutality.

It does not need a bunch of players crying wolf to make it that much harder. How ironic that as the governing bodies seek to use the disciplinary measures to keep professional rugby that much more honest, players themselves are resorting to one of the most dishonest measures of all to gain their advantage.

By Danny Stephens

Planet Rugby