Antics put rugby in the dock alongside football

RUGBY has never been slow over the decades to look down its nose at football in respect of abusing the referee and trying to get an opponent sent off.

Two incidents last weekend provided depressing evidence the game is losing the battle on both fronts.

Scarlets’ flanker James Davies, found guilty as charged of foul and abusive language to English referee Greg Garner during last Sunday’s defeat at Toulon, has been banned for three weeks. Serve him right but why did Garner fail to take dismissive action?

To make it worse, Davies even got away with making an obscene gesture. By appearing to cock a deaf ear, Garner did referees the world over a disservice by allowing Davies to continue as though nothing had happened.

The citing commissioner saw it as a red-card offence, hence the disciplinary hearing. Garner did not even use a yellow when he ought to have adopted a policy of zero tolerance, as Wayne Barnes did in sending Dylan Hartley packing from the 2013 Premiership Grand Final at Twickenham.

As for Pascal Pape, why was he not put in the dock for the worst dive witnessed on a rugby field since the Andy Haden-Frank Oliver farce got the All Blacks out of a tight corner at Cardiff Arms Park almost 40 years ago?

Pape’s gross overreaction to Edinburgh’s Phil Burleigh slapping him in the face for tugging his jersey ought to have landed the gnarled French lock on a disrepute charge. Instead he, like Haden and Oliver, got clean away with it.