Keep your 'hickey' to yourself

Citizens of the Western Cape need not feel too concerned at the strange whirring sound they heard over the weekend. I can now confirm that it was just the body of the late Dr Danie Craven spinning around in the grave.

As if the Springbok performances have not been bad enough, the Australians have now given the inventor of the phrase "It's a mans game" even more reason to rotate like an underground windmill in a hurricane.

I will never condone dirty play, but from my own personal viewpoint the events of the past few days could have rather sinister implications for us journalists. If others take their cue from the Aussies, I foresee a time when it will become common place for players to strip themselves naked so that rugby writers and photographers can record every scratch, stud-mark and bruise picked up in this contact sport.

Now there are a few women I know who would enjoy that job, but sorry Corné and company, it is not for me. You can keep your scratches, bumps and, yes, your hickeys too, under wraps where they belong.

Believe me, though, in my time as a rugby writer I have seen some horrific scars, all of which contributes to the bizarreness of the new Aussie charade of "Let's show our hickeys to the media" and tell them colourful stories involving panthers and large cats.

Reading the garbage coming out of Australia at the moment tends to confirm what I have always secretly believed - Australians who play rugby union are those who just aren't tough enough to play league.

Now I am not for a moment suggesting that biting is acceptable. Far from it. When Johan le Roux was suspended in 1994 this pen was vehemently supportive of the strong stand taken.

But surely running to the media and taking your shirt off should be an absolute last resort. I was in New Zealand in 1994 when Fitzpatrick was bitten and some of the Kiwi television people were quite open afterwards about Fitzpatrick's first words to them as he came in for the post-match interview.

"Guys, I would rather not talk about this if you don't mind," is what Fitzpatrick, pointing to his ear, is alleged to have said before the cameras started running. Fitzpatrick was clearly cogniscant of that old saying that "what happens on the field stays on the field", as well as the reality that there was a referee on the field, television cameras present and a citing commissioner in the stands to see that justice ran its course.

That the Aussies clearly weren't prepared to take that route to me vindicates those who smell a conspiracy theory. According to Cape Times rugby correspondent Stephen Nell, the Aussies pitched up at the post-match media conference without man-of-the-match Phil Waugh, but with Brendan Cannon joining Eddie and George. Clearly they had come with the express purpose of whinging, and to hell with the positive aspects of what was actually an entertaining game.

Now these people might even be credible if they were not the members of the same team that last year had a winger called Ben Tune who boasted publicly, through the media, about a punch that he had landed on Bok captain Corne Krige (yeah, you thought I was going to bring up the drug incident, but I didn't even need to).

If the inside information gleaned from the Bok management is anything to go by, they were also the guys who, when confronted with new damning evidence at a disciplinary hearing involving two of their players and Faan Rautenbach, tried to sweep the whole thing under the carpet when they realised that their players could be suspended. There attitude was something to the effect that "these things happen in rugby".

Am I wrong to assume that the Aussies have been waiting since that day for an opportunity to bounce back at the Boks? The whole Brisbane media show appears to have been too orchestrated for this assumption to be regarded as far-fetched.

Finally on Tuesday there was some semblance of sense being spoken. A media statement from the headquarters of SA Rugby (Pty) Ltd states that Rian Oberholzer and his Aussie counterpart John O'Neill have agreed that in future all allegations of this nature should be dealt with by the respective managements or through the official channels.

That is what should have been done in the first place. As All Black coach John Mitchell put it, there does appear to be some other game going on behind the scenes.

By the way, Mitchell saw the game the same way as I did once I had a chance on Monday to watch it again and concentrate specifically on the allegations made by the Wallaby camp.

There was of course THAT tackle by Rob Kempson, which cannot be defended, and some instances where it did appear the referee was ignoring Wallaby misdemeanours which the Boks were severely punished for. It goes without saying too that Georgie was providing a constant commentary to the ref on what he should be looking for.

But I couldn't quite spot the many varied incidents that the Aussies are pointing to. I wouldn't even say that the players of the respective teams looked overly truculent.

Sure, there was quite a bit of pushing and shoving, but certainly as much, if not more, from the Aussies. And the first thing that the Bok captain said when he came off the field was that his team would have to take a close look at its discipline.

So why did Mr Jones find it necessary to snipe at him afterwards and call him "rubbish", a term I do not even use on my dog? The only incident that I could detect where Krige was involved was one where George Smith went in dangerously high (uncommented on by the Aussie commentators, by the way) on one of the Boks and then virtually fell over Krige afterwards. A few punches were thrown by both players while they were on the ground.

In light of the claims being made by the Aussies, it is fascinating to learn that there never was any citing from them for biting. If they were certain enough about the incident to run to the media about it, surely they should have been prepared to cite? As for the other allegations, referee Paddy O'Brien said he never spotted any of the onfield skullduggery referred to by the Wallabies.

Referees do normally pick these things up if it is there (and for heck's sake, surely Georgie would have pointed it out to him). And it does make a difference for the purposes of my argument that Bakkies Botha was acquitted on the charge of malicious intent.

In the end this whole hullaballoo, which did rugby far more harm than good, all came down to utterances made by a coach at a media conference within 30 minutes of a match coming to an end.

My bet is that if Jones had been a player and he had said what he did about Krige when referring to a referee, he would have been slapped with a lengthy suspension and stiff fine.

So maybe the SA Rugby statement doesn't go far enough - what they should be doing is bringing a charge against Eddie Jones for bringing the game into disrepute.