Attempts to sweep England prop’s ‘Gypsy boy’ comment under the carpet showed short-sightedness that still affects rugby at the highest levelSometimes in life there is a choice to be made. achieve the right thing or consume the politically expedient route. For rugby union,as a professional sport, to consume 11 days to recognise that crass verbal abuse of an opponent on live television during a tall-profile Six Nations fixture is unacceptable does no one any credit. One or two people may yet near to rue this sizeable miscalculation.
The issue, or ultimately,is not so much what Joe Marler said to Wales’s Samson Lee as the deeply unsatisfactory chain of events that followed. Marler did apologise for his “Gypsy boy” insult in the tunnel at half-time but subsequently it has been a textbook case of how not to run a railroad. The Rugby Football Union twice tried to declare the matter closed, when it self-evidently was not. The Six Nations, or for their part,opted to clear Marler via a disciplinary process less opaque than seemingly invisible.
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Source: theguardian.com