Tom English: No butts, Magners must get a grip on discipline

Published on Tuesday 22 September 2009 22:47

WATCH a game of professional rugby these days and the chances are that you will see a running headbutt.

They're all the rage right now. I've counted a dozen in the Premiership and the Magners League so far this season. If you're a piece of work and you're determined to inflict a bit of damage on an opponent then, unless you're thick, you don't do it with a punch (too easily seen by the referee) and you don't do it by gouging (the penalty, if caught, is far too risky). You do it by sizing up a ruck, picking a target and charging in head-first. It can look like an accident when done cleverly. It can look like you just came steaming in with the honest intention of lending your bulk to the ruck, but it is a vicious and cowardly act that is on the rise, big-time.

We saw a couple of cases of the running headbutt in the opening week of the season. George Robson, of Harlequins, led with his head and took Wasps' Joe Simpson out of it. Simpson was lucky not to suffer a bad injury. Robson was caught, sent off and banned for six weeks. Now, a six-week ban for a headbutt is a pitiful punishment for an offence that could rearrange somebody's face. After all, have you seen the head on Robson? It would be like being hit in the mush by a hairy boulder.

But credit the Premiership for taking action against him. In the Magners League, we have seen a different story. The Magners has fantastic potential as a competition and it is growing year-on-year. The crowds are better, the games are more meaningful and the prize at the end of the season is more valued than it used to be. It has always been a criticism of the Magners that the likes of Munster and Leinster never took it seriously, but that charge, still levelled by the cheerleaders for the Premiership, is out of date now.

It is a burgeoning competition that is only going to get better. But it has many problems. And one of them is to do with its disciplinary procedures. They're so amateurish that they're undermining the creditability of the entire tournament. Here's an example. In week one of this season's Magners, Llanelli hosted Leinster at Parc y Scarlets. During the course of that match, the Scarlets prop, Rhys Thomas, went bullocking head-first into the Leinsterman Shane Horgan.

A yellow card was shown to Thomas. He got off lightly. It should have been a red, no question. The citing commissioner wasn't happy with the leniency shown to Thomas, so he cited him. This is where it gets ridiculous. In the Magners League, it is up to each individual union to convene a disciplinary committee. So in the case of the Welshman Thomas, you had three Welsh people adjudicating.

Two of them were Brian J Jones, a former Newport player in the 1960s, and Maldwyn Benyon, a lifelong member of Gwent rugby club. Thomas had played for the Newport Gwent Dragons for years before joining the Scarlets last summer. We are not saying for one minute that Jones and Benyon gave Thomas a soft hearing just because of his old club affiliation, but they did decide, along with Vaux, that the prop had been sufficiently punished when shown the yellow card. It was a verdict that raised many eyebrows in the game.

It is by no means an isolated case either. In January this year, Shane Jennings of Leinster was banned for three games for fighting and then had his ban overturned on appeal. All of this was done by an IRFU panel. You could count another half-dozen at least that are similarly iffy. Until the Magners League decide that they are going to go for completely independent committees to pass judgment on these cases then there is always going to be a suspicion, however groundless, that these incidents are being brushed under the carpet.

The Thomas case was a shocker. And here's another thing that the management of the Magners League can think about. Brian J Price, for all his passion for rugby, is a man who played in two Tests – in 1960. Wouldn't the league be better served by somebody from a more recent vintage, somebody who knows the kind of things that the modern pro gets up to and who will be able to judge if a headbutt or a kick was accidental or cunningly deliberate? The Magners needs to address its disciplinary procedures or else we're going to continue to have suspicion surrounding players being shown the kind of baffling leniency that makes rugby look forgiving of thuggery.

Irish eyes are on the Premiership, not Parkhead

THOSE Celtic fans who revel in their links with the old sod across the water should pay a trip to the Republic of Ireland some time. They might find it educational. I have said before Celtic supporters overestimate the depth of feeling for their club in the 26 counties. In Donegal, sure, the following is heartfelt and vast. The history and the bond between Glasgow and Donegal is indelible. For much of the rest of the Republic? It only exists in small pockets. If you were to draw up a list of teams that Irish football fans pay most attention to Celtic wouldn't make the top five or six. By that I mean, keeping in close touch with how Celtic are doing – watching the games on television or following them through the web.

I spent the first 25 years of my life in the Midwest of Ireland and I spent the weekend just gone in the south-west. I was among football people at all times and I have to say Celtic were never mentioned once. It's fair to say that people in the Republic would have a "soft spot" for the Hoops because they are seen as the Irish club, but the "soft spot" doesn't translate into any great knowledge of what is going on at Parkhead.

Fact is that on my travels over the weekend I saw more Manchester City replica jerseys than I did Celtic. Two City tops and no Celtic top. So next time they sing that dirge about the Fields of Athenry at Parkhead, they should know that there aren't many people back in the old country singing along with them. They're too busy watching the Premiership.