Imagine if a footballer did this?

[Rich]

Really don't have an issue with it. There's a much higher level of aggression in Rugby, so it'll get out of control and a few punches will be thrown.

The authorities will take action if they see fit. No big deal IMO.

Very different sports RU to footy.

[Shaggy]

It's assault. Do that in the street or anywhere else on the planet outside a boxing ring and you're going to jail. Absolute thuggery, yet oddly accepted in rugby. Although it's the most thuggish sport around so it should come as no surprise.

Ultimately it comes down to a class issue, which is a disgrace. "Part of the game, old chap", "high jinks, Sebastian". Just a few public schoolboys having a bit of a ruck.

That happens in football and those working class scumbags are condemned as hooligans.

[Rich]

Similar fights happen in Rugby League which is more "working class" than football so how do you explain that? Hardly toffs when you're from Wigan, Warrington, and Leigh.

I'm not trying to condone it but it is an intense and highly physical sport, so sometimes it'll spill over.

[Shaggy]

Yeah but this was Rugby Union and that's exactly the reaction this assault has drawn.

Football is every bit as liable to spill over. Rugby attracts passive, indifferent and small crowds. Football crowds are far larger, loud, aggressive and much more passionate, and that translates, yet you don't see footballers going round assaulting each other.

[Rich]

Ultimately it comes down to a class issue, which is a disgrace. "Part of the game, old chap", "high jinks, Sebastian". Just a few public schoolboys having a bit of a ruck.

So why do you think that its a disgrace that it comes down to class?

It doesn't come down to class.

Fights and rucks happen all the time in both codes of Rugby, and for that matter other similar heavy contact sports like Aussie Rules, yet these sports are played by all sorts of classes.

[Fernandinho]

Aussie rules doesn't compare mate. Never see punches thrown and the tackling isn't even close. You aren't even allowed to tackle from behind in the sport, and you can only properly tackle by wrestling them to the ground.

[Rich]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AbugTv3FzY"]YouTube - The Best Fight In The AFL[/ame]

[Rich]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfkOeckK_yc&NR=1"]YouTube - Football Fights[/ame]

[Shaggy]

Yep, I think rugby is far worse.

Do they gouge each others eyes out in Aussie Rules?

Of course it's a class thing in this country. This was an assault that took place in rugby union and as usual nothing is made of it. Had the same happened on a football pitch there'd be total uproar.

[Hollowman]

That first fight from the Aussie Rules there, the Hawthorn-Essendon one, loads of players were fined and suspended as a result of that. So I don;t see how that backs your argument up. Shaggy's point isn't just that fights happen, it's that the reaction to them is completely different to the reaction to far less serious offences committed by footballers.

[Rich]

If we are going to talk specifics then - I'd imagine that the bloke doing the punching in the original video will be cited and banned/fined.

So it isn't condoned and it will be punished IMO. Nothing to do with a class of person.

Eye gouging is horrible and is always acted upon.

[Shaggy]

He will get a joke punishment and it'll all be forgotten about. Next to nothing in the press. If that had happened on a football pitch it'd be front page, hang the lad out to try, season-long ban or something equally severe - which, in isolation, is quite right when you're committing a criminal offence on the pitch. Yet the rugby yob will get a token fine, a small ban and nothing else will be made of it. The mud certainly won't stick as it would a footballer.

And IMO that is purely down to the British press/public viewing rugby as merely a middle class jolly boys ruck - a few doctors and bankers having a bit of fun - while footballers are all thick, working class scumbags who if they weren't playing football they'd all be in jail. It's wrong.

[Rich]

You won't force me to leave the site Shaggy, I won't be your next victim.

But we'll have to disagree on the whole class business - nothing to do with it IMO.

[Shaggy]

You won't force me to leave the site Shaggy, I won't be your next victim.

But we'll have to disagree on the whole class business - nothing to do with it IMO.

So how on earth do you explain the ridiculous disparity in reactions?

[Neil Young]

...it would be a huge ban and a massive debate about role models and all that other stuff.

Why is it tolerated and smoothed over in rugby?

Because rugby is crap and no one cares about it.