Off the ball: Trampling over image of sport

Brawling New Zealand and Fiji should have been thrown out of the next round of the World Sevens, writes DAVID LEGGATT.

As stark sporting images go, the ugly brawl between the New Zealand and Fijian sevens rugby teams this week was hard to beat.

Here we are in the middle of summer. Anna Kournikova has done her thing at the women's tennis tournament, Goran Ivanisevic and Marat Safin pulled the crowds at Stanley St, Tiger Woods is charming arguably the biggest audience at a New Zealand Open, and our cricketers are sweating it out in Australia.

And what do we get from our national game, albeit the abbreviated version? A grubby throwback to darken the mood.

What happened in the World Sevens at Santiago did nothing for New Zealand's rugby image. The sight of black-clad figures stamping and exchanging punches with the no-less culpable Fijians over a prolonged period at the end of the festive season was too much to stomach.

We have heard the protestations that the New Zealand players were simply responding to the initial assault. That may be so, in terms of the old one-in-all-in, let's-stick-together-brothers philosophy.

But it defies the sensibilities how Chris Masoe, the Taranaki flanker, escaped any form of individual punishment for stamping on a Fijian.

There is an old rugby argument that a punch is one thing - the target usually sees it coming and has a moment to raise a defence - but kicking or stamping on a prone, usually defenceless opponent is another situation altogether.

Perhaps we should not get too prudish about it all, though.

After all, physical contact is the essence of rugby. There always has been, and will continue to be, violence in rugby when fit, able-bodied, committed players are striving in opposition for the same goal.

The line between legitimate, rugged play and illegal, violent acts is often blurred, particularly in the dark cavern of the ruck.

The sevens brawlers didn't have that excuse. They were well out of even the most generous line.

There are some sports where violence is part of the appeal.

No ice hockey contest in the NHL would be complete without an off-the-puck clash. Ask any diehard fan and they will swear the game will not be the same if that is removed.

The object of boxing is to hurt the opponent, and ultimately to render him, or her, senseless.

There is a voyeuristic aspect to all this.

I heard one respected commentator express his dismay when told that players from other teams laughed as they watched the sevens brawl. He should have known better. When television showed the images yet again on Wednesday night, several journalists at the New Zealand Open golf championship stopped what they were doing to watch.

A few years ago, the former English and Lions hooker Brian Moore fronted a video glorifying rugby violence. English soccer hard man Vinnie Jones - more recently a different sort of hard man in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch - hosted a video showing soccer's best dirty moments.

There is a fascination with violence in sport. You might not like or approve of it, but you watch it - then mutter your condemnation.

The New Zealand Rugby Union was right not to appeal against what was already a lily-livered reprimand. It could have gone a step further and taken it upon itself to dish out some punishment worthy of the name. When the International Rugby Board citing commissioner, New Zealander Steve Hinds, announced that none of the New Zealanders' individual actions warranted further punishment, he was clearly looking at a different videotape than me.

Fiji's chief perpetrator, Marika Vunibaka, has previous form for this sort of thing - a World Cup head-butt and subsequent early shower three years ago being merely the best-remembered. That won't impress the Crusaders, because it takes him out of half the Super 12.

Any more fighting from the Fijians on the sevens circuit and they will lose the 18 points they accrued in Santiago. The best option was probably to throw both teams out of the next round.

I'll wager that if New Zealand and Fiji meet in the next round at Mar del Plata this weekend it will be popguns at 10 paces.

Either way, with the sun beating down, give me the tennis, golf and cricket any day.