Late on Tuesday evening, Eben Etzebeth attended a disciplinary hearing to find out how many weeks his moment of madness in the final minutes of Saturday’s thrashing of Wales was going to cost him.
Etzebeth, a world-class lock, has always played with an edge but his record was practically spotless, with no other suspension since his debut season back in 2012. Yet the evidence of the Springbok pushing his thumb into Alex Mann’s left eye, captured painfully in slow-motion, was damning.
It took a couple of extra days for a three-person disciplinary panel to conclude Etzebeth’s actions were intentional, rather than reckless (serious but without intent). A 12-week ban, reduced from an opening mark of 18 on account of his good record, admission of guilt, apology and conduct at the hearing. Etzebeth’s great rival from the All Blacks, Ardie Savea, provided a character testimonial in support. And while all of those elements are worthy and nice, the bottom line is Etzebeth gouged an opponent, and will now rightly miss three months of action as a result.
Rugby has an inglorious catalogue of egregious acts players can commit on one another. For punching, think Duncan McRae unloading on Ronan O’Gara during the 2001 British and Irish Lions tour, essentially an 11-punch assault which, surprisingly, only landed the Australian a seven-match ban. Or how about Michel Palmié, a France forward whose name you may not be familiar with, who was banned for life – yes, life – after partially blinding an opponent with a punch in 1978.
Stamping? Peter Clohessy – few rugby players have carried better nicknames than ‘The Claw’ – copped 26 weeks for a frankly hideous bit of foul play, connecting hard with the head of France’s Oliver Roumat. Biting occasionally rears its head, as recently as the Women’s Rugby World Cup when France’s Axelle Berthoumieu tried to prevent an Aoife Wafer turnover by using her teeth.
Berthomieu was banned for 12 weeks. When Johan le Roux was given an 18-month suspension for biting Sean Fitzpatrick’s ear back in 1994, he had a colourful response. "For an 18-month suspension, I feel I probably should have torn it off. Then at least I could say I've returned to South Africa with the guy's ear."
All inexcusable offences, all repugnant acts. And yet gouging, historically, has always seemed worse than all of them, because of the serious risks that come with aggressively making contact with the eye of an opponent, potentially blinding them. Robbing someone of their sight through an act of aggression on a rugby field? It’s abhorrent.
To be clear, while Etzebeth’s action on Mann is inexcusable and deserves its punishment, he is certainly not the first or the worst. The lack of detailed camera footage in the 1960s and 1970s is probably a blessing, given that some rugby was occasionally played in the middle of a battle royale.
What does it feel like to be on the end of a player going for your eye sockets? Here is James Haskell back in 2012, having had the misfortune of being gouged not once, but twice. Firstly, by his future England team-mate Dylan Hartley in 2007 – Hartley was banned for six months for gouging both Haskell and Johnny O’Connor of Wasps in the same match – and later in 2012 by Northampton’s Neil Best, who was suspended for 18 weeks.
“I was quite concerned. When an eye specialist tells you it might be permanent, and for two days you are effectively completely blind because you can't open one eye when the other one is so sore, it was worrying,” Haskell said after the gouge from Best.
There was a time where World Rugby, then known as the International Rugby Board, noticeably struggled to take gouging as seriously as they should have done, dishing out eight-week bans to Schalk Burger – one of the more high-profile incidents in recent memory, going after Luke Fitzgerald less than a minute into the second Test between the British and Irish Lions and South Africa in 2009 - and Sergio Parisse, the great Italy No 8.
Remarkably those suspensions came one day apart, and both Burger and Parisse’s actions were deemed to be reckless rather than intentional. That prompted the IRB to take a firmer stance, vowing to launch a review of the sanction structure “in order to send out the strongest possible message that such acts of illegal or foul play will not be tolerated”.
Which is why when David Attoub, a prop from Stade Français, was found guilty of gouging Ulster’s Stephen Ferris – faced with undeniable evidence thanks to some shrewd camerawork capturing Attoub’s actions - the book was thrown at him. “The sanction must be such to make other players stop and think before someone suffers a really serious eye injury,” Jeff Blackett, in charge of the ruling, said afterwards, banning Attoub for 70 weeks. Attoub attempted an appeal, suggesting the photographs had been doctored, which ultimately failed. Another Stade player, Julien Dupuy, also gouged Ferris and was banned for 23 weeks.
The pain of the act itself is obviously intense but the real reason gouging is so despicable is the fear it creates, that concern that your sight may be permanently damaged. “The finger in my right eye was forced downward in a poking and gouging motion; it was someone trying to drive a finger as hard as he could into my eye socket and I could not prevent it,” Ferris said in his testimony. Only Richard Nones, the Colomiers prop, has received a longer gouging ban than Attoub, banned for two years for attacking Pontypridd’s Sven Cronk back in 1999.
There are horrifying accounts of amateur players losing their sight in gouging incidents, like Clarence Harding in 2010, blinded in his right eye playing for Gravesend against Maidstone. Harding later said: “I can't fathom the words to describe the immense pain." Maidstone were fined £2,000 and deducted 50 points, which both feel trivial when weighed up against someone partially losing their sight.
Etzebeth’s actions, while bad, were not on the same scale as those previous offenders. They were however a reminder that gouging is the worst physical act a rugby player - actually, any athlete in any sport - can inflict on their fellow player.