'Gouging has no place in rugby'

By John Leicester

Paris - If and when a player is blinded or emerges from a ruck with an opponent's eyeball skewered on his finger, rugby might rue the day it didn't make an example of Schalk Burger.

An eight-week ban. That's the little slap on the wrist that the South Africa flanker got for one of the worst terror-tactics in rugby's how-to book of fouls: fiddling around, near or inside an opponent's eye sockets.

Eight weeks. Hardly a huge deterrent against a form of cheating that, by some indications, is becoming more common.

The eyes in this case belonged to Lions winger Luke Fitzgerald. Less than a minute into what proved to be a bruising and epic match between their two teams last weekend, Burger was caught red-handed.

The video looks clear: lying next to Fitzgerald on the collapsing edge of a rolling Springbok maul, Burger's left hand crept over the Irishman's face, where his fingers settled across the left-eye area like a spiderish creature from a horror movie.

"Clearly, fingers in the eye area," touch judge Bryce Lawrence could be heard telling French referee Christophe Berdos. "It's at least a yellow card."

Off went Burger for 10 minutes.

Berdos can be forgiven for not simply sending off Burger for good. He couldn't see the foul himself and reducing South Africa to 14 players so early on would likely have sapped all drama from the game, which the Springboks edged 28-25 with a last-minute penalty kick.

But why Burger subsequently escaped with such a lenient suspension is a mystery. It's also mind-boggling that Springboks coach Peter de Villiers wasn't banned, too, for suggesting that such skullduggery is simply inherent to rugby. It's not.

Players who have been "eye-gouged" say it is terrifying. In the game's rule-book, only abusing match officials, biting and "testicle grabbing or twisting or squeezing" are treated more seriously.

England flanker James Haskell, at a disciplinary hearing in September 2008, described the "excruciating pain" he felt when Ireland's Neil Best gouged his right eye during a club match 10 days earlier.

Haskell testified that Best's fingers "stayed in his eye and then pulled his head up by his eye" and that "he tried to play on but his eye was so badly injured that he could not see and he felt physically sick because of the soreness".

Best was suspended for 18 weeks.

Judge Jeff Blackett stated in that ruling: "Contact with an opponent's eye or eye area is a serious offence because of the vulnerability of an eye and the risk of permanent injury. It is often the result of an insidious act and is one of the offences most abhorred by rugby players.

"Serious offences of this sort - and particularly those known colloquially as "eye gouging" - must be dealt with severely to protect players, to deter others from such activity and to remove offenders."

Blackett has been sitting on rugby disciplinary panels since 1998. In an interview this week, he said his "gut feeling" is that such cases have increased in the past two or three years. That could be because video scrutiny and better refereeing have reduced other, more visible types of foul.

"I think very few players would intentionally gouge," Blackett said. "But I think quite a few players would run their hands over a face to get an advantage, which is inherently dangerous, and we must drive that out the game."

Burger's appearance last Saturday was his 50th for the Springboks. In 2004, he was rugby's international player of the year. From video replays, he did not appear to go for a full back-of-retina scrape on Fitzgerald, who was able to play on. But nor did it seem to be an inadvertent brush across the eye-area. Fitzgerald raised both hands to his face to prise loose Burger's fingers.

That Burger's action happened in full view is another reason why his punishment is too lenient. It doesn't send the right message to young players and followers of the game. Would Burger have been slapped harder if he came from a lesser rugby nation and not the current world champions? Marius Tincu, who hails from rugby minnow Romania, got an 18-week suspension last November for a club-match eye-foul.

Finally, there's De Villiers. Suggesting, as the Springboks coach did, that rugby would be emasculated if stripped of its violence only made this affair more dismaying.

Even if gouging is rugby's dirty little secret, it was reckless and damaging for the game that he appeared to condone Burger's actions by insisting that his player didn't warrant his yellow card. De Villiers' subsequent apology was half-hearted.

"Why don't we all go to the nearest ballet shop, get some nice tutus and get a great dancing show going on," he said. "No eye-gouging, no tackling, no nothing."

From its world champions, rugby deserves better. - Sapa-AP