One rule for the pros, another for the amateurs - why rugby has a fight on its hands

You don’t have to be Hercule Poirot to conclude that there appears to be one law for professional rugby and another for the amateur game when it comes to the punishments handed down for on-pitch violence.
The jailing of Keynsham number eight Jack Weston for six months is a case that brings into sharp relief what, to my mind, is a disgusting disparity between the professional and amateur games in this country.
Weston was put behind bars for throwing two punches at an opponent during a ‘hotly contested’ derby with Oldfield Old Boys.

The moment that cost Jack Weston, left, his freedom 

Back in May, a rather better known player by the name of Manu Tuilagi threw three punches at an opponent in another hotly contested derby, this time in the East Midlands, between Leicester and Northampton.
Weston is now sitting in a prison cell. Tuilagi? Well, less than a month after letting rip with his barrage of punches in front of the TV cameras, he was named the Premiership’s Young Player of the Season. He then went on to play for England in the World Cup.
The only slap on the wrist for Tuilagi was a nominal five-week ban – I say nominal because the regular league season was over.
He was also ordered to pay £500 in costs – pretty small change for an international star.
In evidence given against Weston – who pleaded guilty to GBH – his victim, Oldfield’s Ben Staunton, said the impact of the second punch he had received had been “ten out of ten”.
Those who have seen footage of Tuilagi’s final effort on Chris Ashton could quite reasonably give it the same rating.

Ashton needed treatment to his cut and bruised face; Staunton’s jaw was broken.
The RFU’s disciplinary officer, Judge Jeff Blackett, so often a voice of reason, made the following observation after the hearing into Tuilagi’s behaviour. It was an observation that raised eyebrows at the time but, in the context of Weston’s case, it raises as many questions as it does eyebrows.
“This sort of incident is very damaging to the image of the game and there is no place for this type of offending on the rugby pitch,” wrote Blackett.
“Had it occurred in the high street an offender would have been prosecuted in the criminal courts. Nevertheless we are confident that Manu Tuilagi will learn a valuable lesson from this.”
Had it occurred in the high street.... Is the inference from this that professional players enjoy immunity from prosecution for their on-field violence? Because if that is the case, then it is certainly not the case for the amateur game, as Weston’s case has shown.
Jack Weston’s unacceptable behaviour did not occur on the high street, it occurred on the rugby pitch – and he had the book thrown at him.
Manu Tuilagi’s unacceptable behaviour also occurred on the rugby pitch – in front of a massive TV audience – and the CPS sat on its hands.
Almost laughably in the context of Blackett’s remarks, the judge in Weston’s case, Judge Carol Hagen, jailed him because of the bad example he had set.
“It is important everyone realises the consequences of the behaviour you engaged in on that November afternoon,” she told him before sending him down.
If lessons about consequences are to be learned, then Judge Hagen’s logic would lead us to the conclusion that Tuilagi should have been jailed too. After all, he was playing in a match watched by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people on television. He is the one idolised by kids.
I don’t condone Jack Weston’s actions, not one bit – thuggery in all its guises does not belong in the game – but the inconsistency across the different levels of the game stinks.
Once he is out of prison, Weston will face a Somerset RFU disciplinary hearing. That, surely, will be an ideal occasion for everyone in rugby to think long and hard about this frankly appalling disparity.



The Mad Dog keeps smiling - Lewis Moody on retirement and his "ridiculous" career

Lewis Moody talks to me about his career, retirement and that creaking trophy cabinet

In his autobiography published after last year’s World Cup, Lewis Moody paid tribute to the cast of medics who had patched him up during his 16-year career.
And one day, the tale of his injuries, operations and comebacks will doubtless form a textbook for first-year medical students.

Ultimately, though, the years of attrition took their toll, resulting in his enforced retirement this week.

But, typically, Moody (pictured) was still smiling and looking to the future when I caught up with him on Tuesday. It was such a demeanour that saw him through many long injury lay-offs, injuries caused more often that not by the way he put himself about on the pitch.

Full-on, devil-may-care, kamikaze, scant regard for his own safety, body on the line... There are many ways in which Lewis Moody’s style of play have been described. Suffice it to say that the first person who nicknamed him Mad Dog wasn’t barking up the wrong tree.

Like a veteran of many a campaign in far-flung war zones, it takes more than one breath to get through Moody’s roll of honours.

The most capped England flanker, 71 caps for his country, seven Premiership titles, three for the British and Irish Lions, two Heineken Cup winner’s medals, one Anglo-Welsh Cup winner’s medal, two Six Nations Championship winner’s medals and one World Cup winners medal. It is some haul, and one that enables Moody to be at peace with his decision to hang up his boots.

“There’s no self-pity at all,” he says of the shoulder injury that has caused his retirement. “That’s not my style.

“I’ve had a phenomenal career - far greater than anyone could have imagined, certainly me. Some players don’t win a single trophy in their career, I think I’ve won 14 or something ridiculous.”

Many of Moody’s achievements were accomplished despite him being diagnosed with colitis in 2004-05. Over-exposure to anti-inflammatories, antibiotics and painkillers contributed to the onset of the condition, and a few seasons ago Moody even stopped taking protein shakes - ubiquitous in every professional club - to help his intestinal problems.

Moody made his international debut in 2001 and went on to feature in all seven of England’s games in their triumphant 2003 World Cup campaign.

He represented the Lions in 2005, helped England reach the 2007 World Cup and then captained his country into last year’s tournament.

Ultimately it proved a disappointing experience as England bowed out in the quarter-finals after a campaign dogged by controversy. Moody blamed himself for some of it.

He announced his retirement from the international game after the World Cup and was looking forward to channelling all his energies into Bath Rugby. Then, in his first Premiership game after returning from New Zealand, Moody took to the field at Sixways in what was to be his last game. A shoulder injury ended his game early, and it was to prove to be the final curtain on his career.

“It was gutting because when I retired from international rugby, all I wanted to do was focus my time on playing for Bath and playing out the two years left on my contract and then maybe having another year with the club,” explains Moody.

“I came back to training and was getting through everything great and then I suddenly couldn’t get through anything.

“You realise in your own head that something’s fundamentally not right and I realised that the injury I’d picked up against Worcester wasn’t something I was going to be able to come back from.

“It was an easy decision in that the body just wouldn’t recover.

“Of course I took professional advice. I wasn’t prepared to give up on my career until I’d explored every avenue.”

On Sunday, Moody decided he had played his final game.

“Over the weekend I had to bite the bullet and be realistic. I had to admit that I’d tried to come back but that unfortunately it wasn’t going to happen.”

And what of the future?

“There are many avenues for me to look at. Coaching is one of them, media stuff, team-building, after-dinner speaking and getting involved with the charities and sponsors that you can never give enough time to when you are playing due to training and games.

“There are so many options open to you it’s almost daunting thinking that you’ve got to go down one of them.

“Would I be a good coach? Who knows, I’d need to do some to find out. Would I be a good presenter? Who knows, I’d need to do some first. There are some interesting months ahead.”

And to cap it all...

Depending on your perspective (which in turn depends on how deep your pockets are), the Premiership’s salary cap is either a market-distorting piece of red tape that prevents English sides from competing on a level playing field in Europe, or a precious regulation that prevents the Chelseafication of rugby.




Whatever your thoughts on the cap’s existence, if it is there then it has to be enforced. Toothless regulations only muddy the waters.



For too long – to my mind, at least – the cap has been unsatisfactorily policed. It took too long to appoint a cap manager, and when he was appointed it was all a bit too low key.



Which is why it is good news that Premiership Rugby has now appointed big-hitting law firm Charles Russell to beef up its monitoring process.



The rumours of some clubs having previously embarked on sharp practices in order to skirt the cap are legion and it would be disingenuous of the authorities to pretend otherwise.



No doubt a great number of the ‘cap dodge’ tales are apocryphal – a birthday card stuffed full of cash was a wheeze that one player once jokingly mentioned to me – but for the sake of fairness, every side in the Premiership needs to know that all the others are complying with the wage ceiling.



Looking at their CV, few would doubt that Charles Russell are the ideal practice with which to ensure clubs remain whiter than white when it comes to the cap. Its clients include the Football Association, the British Horseracing Authority, the Scottish Football Association, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union.



Contract scrutiny, spot checks and annual assessments should all be part and parcel of cap regulation. And rather like the judicial system at large, I suspect the rugby- supporting public would like cap assessment to not only be done, but be seen to be done.



Which is why an annually published cap report – with the necessary figures and sensitive information redacted – would be a welcome move.



With the addition next season of a regulation that will allow clubs to place one player outside of the cap, plus a modest increase in the basic cap, efficient monitoring will become more crucial. Charles Russell, get cracking.

Are you happy now, Sir?

When a Premiership coach mutters the words “referee” and “criticism” in the same sentence, he is dipping his toes in very dangerous waters indeed.

As Saracens’ Brendan Venter and Sale’s Steve Diamond have learned over the past year, expressing one’s contempt for an official’s performance in a less than subtle way can lead to stiff punishment.

And quite right too. Once respect for the ref goes, respect for the opposition – and the broader game – can go up in a puff of smoke as well.

But things cannot be allowed to swing so far that a referee’s performance is beyond criticism and that is why Brad Davis’s remarks, in today’s Chronicle, are welcome.

Read the Bath first-team coach’s comments and you can feel the frustration – but there is sympathy for the referees’ situation, too. Goodness knows that refereeing a rugby match is a tall order. As an enterprise with more regulations than an EU bureaucrats’ banquet, one man cannot make the right call at every single point in an 80-minute game. The poor bloke only has one pair of eyes.

But that does not mean referees exist in an inner sanctum and are untouchable. If coaches believe a referee has mishandled a particular part of a game, and can deliver measured and cogent explanations as to why that is, then they should be free to voice those views at a post-match press conference. And while Davis’ suggestion that referees should make public mea culpas every time they have made a howler might sit uneasily with some, including me, I can sympathise with the general direction – if not the conclusion – of the argument.

A regime that required referees to hold their hands up could, over time, erode trust in those very officials it was designed to support. Rather than earning supporters’ respect, fans could well end up rolling their eyes and saying “He’s got it wrong again”.

There will be those who lament the fact that not all referees now receive the rather Victorian address of ‘sir’, although a number of professionals still use this.

But if there is to be greater trust in the way games are officiated, then I can suggest three measures to at least get the process going.

Firstly, there needs to be uniform coverage of matches by television match officials. You cannot have a situation where one match is covered by a TMO and another – which is of potentially equal significance to the league’s final shape – which does not give the ref the option of ‘going upstairs’.

Secondly, ensure the assistant referees – aka linesmen – do indeed assist the ref. Well- run games are invariably the product of a trio of officials working in harness, with the man in the middle constantly using the extra eyes and ears that are at his disposal.

Finally, the RFU should make public (perhaps on its website) an abbreviated version of the feedback that it gives to clubs about a referee’s performance. This would at least satisfy supporters that gripes are being addressed. It would also keep the game’s regulators and referees on their toes.

That should help keep the supporters onside, shouldn’t it, sir?

Matt Banahan column coming your way

He might have accused me of being a car thief when I turned up at a press conference the other day in the editor's Merc, but Matt Banahan is still on track to write an exclusive column for The Bath Chronicle during the 6 Nations.

The England back was controversially dropped to the second-string Saxons by Stuart Lancaster earlier this month, but Banners is itching to get back into the senior squad and will be offering his own take on Europe's top rugby competition.
We're just dotting the i's etc but I should have more details soon.

English clubs go (salary) cap in hand as Euro campaigns falter

Bath Rugby have one last chance this weekend to ensure their European campaign ends with a bang rather than a kitten-like whimper. But whether or not they manage to beat Glasgow on Saturday, this season's campaign has seen Bath's value among the continent's big boys fall faster than the Euro.

If Bath were a European economy, they would have endured a triple dip recession in recent years. A new Heineken Cup campaign always heralds fresh positivity, but Bath have nosedived in each of the last three seasons.

Bath have won four Heineken Cup matches during those three campaigns, an embarrassing stat for former champs however you dress it up.

Two of those wins were against Italian whipping boys, with the other two coming at home against Edinburgh in 2009-10 and Montpellier this season. Neither of those last two victories was convincing.

Put another way, very few scalps have been claimed by a side with the self-professed goal of rubbing shoulders with the likes of Toulouse, Munster and Leinster.

But Bath are not the only side whose stock has plummeted on the European bourse. Investors in that traditionally defensive stock, Leicester Tigers, also have cause to feel jittery.

Tigers director of rugby Richard Cockerill partly blamed the salary cap for his side's woes after they were on the end of a beating in Ulster last Friday.

In Cockers' book, the cap prevents English sides from having sufficient depth to compete with those French and Irish sides which have greater wherewithal.

There is certainly something that separates Irish clubs and English clubs at the moment. For proof of that, just cast your eye over the tables.

Three Irish provinces sit at the top of their pools. And the only province that isn't, Connacht, came within a gnat's crotchet of beating Gloucester at Kingsholm, a location not exactly known for its warm welcome.

The cap will lose some of its potency as an excuse next season when it rises. A more compelling explanation for the Anglo-Irish divide, I think, is that the provinces don't have to worry about demotion from the relegation-free Pro12.

If English sides want a level playing field, the Premiership needs a fixed composition. Until then, the dice are unfairly loaded against them.

The malaise afflicting Bath Rugby

"Thank goodness Leicester won.”

As utterances go, those four words pass a Bath Rugby supporter’s lips about as often as Halley’s Comet comes into view.

But it’s got to the point where Bath fans – for their own sanity – are having to rely on what other sides are doing. Heaven knows they receive no peace of mind from watching their own team.

Had Worcester Warriors (the team that first revealed the extent of Bath’s travails - remember that wretchedly inglorious November night at Sixways?) beaten Leicster on Tuesday, Bath would have dropped to 11th in the ladder, just eight points above bottom-placed Newcastle.

Perennial optimists will caution against such gloomy glances at the Aviva Premiership table. Maybe everything will come good as core players return. Maybe Newcastle can be relied upon to finish bottom. Maybe the current blunt strategy pursued by Bath will be whittled into a piercing dart...

On the first point, I have little doubt that the likes of Carl Fearns and Lee Mears will bring about an upswing in Bath’s fortunes once they are fit again. But the strength of that upswing will be nigh on negligible if Bath continue to play with the lack of cohesion and lateral direction that they have displayed in the past two months.

Pundits like Dean Ryan can see it and Bath’s own supporters can see it – there is less gel in Bath than there is on Lawrence Dallaglio’s scalp.

And let’s not be foolish enough to make any assumptions about Newcastle. Bath have lost seven of their last eight matches in all competitions, the Falcons three.

That is not quite comparing like with like, as Newcastle have been competing in the Amlin Cup rather than the Heineken, but the Tynesiders have still defeated the likes of Toulon and Gloucester.

With a sharper looking backline than last season, and with key players already being re-signed, only a fool would brand the Falcons as destined for the drop.

Indeed, while Newcastle sign pivotal players, Bath’s contract negotiations seem to have stalled.

Towards the end of November, chief executive Nick Blofeld was confident that a handful of new deals with out-of-contract players would be concluded and announced before Christmas. That hasn’t happened. Either the club wants to see an improvement in personal performance before deals are done or players are having second thoughts.

But once we are into the new year, players will be fair game to other clubs – and then assembling a squad gets a whole lot trickier.

It is now four weeks since club chairman Bruce Craig used a matchday programme to publicly describe his side’s performance against Worcester as “unacceptable”. Since then, Bath have lost four on the spin, conceding 108 points in the process.

The question is, if things were unacceptable to Craig then, what are they now?

Before the start of this season, the chairman declared that Bath wouldn’t be “chucking the ball around in the rain”, as they had done at times under previous head coach Steve Meehan. Instead, a more pragmatic approach would prevail.

I accept that, at times, the club’s heads-up-and-have-a-go strategy under Meehan displayed a bravado verging on the witless but what supporters are being served now appears just as witless and is far less entertaining – the worst of both worlds.

In the season of goodwill, even a hack like me has been surprised – through emails, through social media and through online forums – at the relish with which supporters have been whetting knives.

And I think the clash with London Irish at The Rec on New Year’s Day will go a long way to determining which way the bird gets carved.

Win and there will be a lot of talk about a new year and a new dawn. Lose badly with another under-par performance and the call for change will rise to a clamour.