Paul Lewis: A game in a Dyer state

Footballers from the same team brawling on the pitch - like the nutters from Newcastle, Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer - is not a new phenomenon. David Batty and Graeme Le Saux were sent off for fighting at Blackburn in 1995 and many have blamed the excesses of professionalism as the reason for such a strange occurrence.

But, while professional excesses - over-paid, over-indulged, under-disciplined and, in many cases, intellectually under-endowed players - are partly to blame, it is not the full story.

I've been in a match where two team-mates brawled. When I lived in Britain, I played rugby on a Saturday and football on Sunday for a pub side based in Berkshire

We weren't much chop but we had one outstanding feature - our goalkeeper was Ian Gillan, the lead singer of Deep Purple.

He was a mate of one of the players and turned up for games in his purple Bentley, usually parking it next to my rusty Hillman, wearing the latest and most expensive kit money could buy.

However, those were his only affectations and he always presented as an affable, quiet guy - quite the antithesis of a rock star. He wouldn't even indulge the curious, like myself, gently rebuffing questions on groupies, drugs and who would win in a screeching contest with Ozzy Osbourne. He wasn't a bad keeper and he'd have a pint with the lads before clambering back into the Bentley and disappearing back into whatever world he'd come from.

But I digress. Gillan was in goal the day we played an Irish side when proceedings were halted by a brawl between two of the Irish. A pass went wrong, one of them gobbed off and the fight was on.

The point I am making is if the excesses of professionalism were to blame for Bowyer and Dyer trading blows, how does that translate to the two Paddies who were about as far away from playing professional football as Mike Tyson was to being the next Pope? No, the answer runs somewhat deeper.

It's two things - first, the nature of the game and second, the culture of dissent. Football is a team game played by individuals. Rugby, on the other hand and for all its faults, is a pure team game where the needs of the team outweigh the individual.

Football has team strategies but it's individual skills and the ability to use the ball which rule. In football, the man who has the ball has the game at his feet, literally. In rugby, the man with the ball is generally playing to a team pattern.

I can hear football fans howling with scorn but I've played both games and can exclusively reveal that football has nothing like the same team ethic as rugby. Part of the reason for that is the culture of dissent. In all levels of football it is commonplace to argue with the ref and curse him. That culture has grown to include team-mates.

I have played in football teams where one team-mate threw a tantrum if the ball was delivered to his head, rather than his feet.

Another, with a mouth the size of Africa and ability the size of Lichtenstein, was warned that if he did not stop abusing his team-mates he would suffer an accident in the showers involving a shower-head and some teeth.

In rugby, this verbal abuse rarely occurs. Someone having a bad time usually gets the support of his team, not questions re his parentage.

These were not professional footballers. They weren't even particularly good social players. But it shows the horrible attitudes and selfish mouthings which have, admittedly, descended from the professional game.

One thing is clear - the authorities won't take meaningful action against Bowyer and Dyer. Even hard-man and manager Graeme Souness spouted platitudes: "I can envisage them playing again but, if it happened again, that'd be it for the pair of them."

So that's it, then. The real reason, of course, that these two haven't had their contracts burned is that they are worth millions. Bowyer and Dyer will do a period of penance before resuming normal operations.

One of the major UK papers has been running a series on football called 'The Game That Ate Itself'. How apt, how true.