PICTURE the scene. A crunch cup collision, a semi-final no less, and a full England international is confronted by an imminent newcomer to the full national squad.

Cue next not one, not two, but three punches aimed and hitting bang on the button the current international player’s head, the assault leading to a nasty cut over the eye.

It’s not a hypothetical scenario asking what should the official do, or what happens next as used to be so beloved of “A Question of Sport”. This incident actually took place in full view of thousands of spectators and also millions of others who saw subsequent television pictures.

The offending player was Leicester rugby union club’s upcoming ace Manu Tuilagi. In no uncertain fashion he assaulted current England wing tyro Chris Ashton when Leicester Tigers clashed with Northampton in the Premiership semi-final.

Amazingly, Tuilagi – of Samoan origins but tipped to be included in the England World Cup squad – only received a yellow card for his attack on Ashton.

Later this week Tuilagi was further punished after a Rugby Football Union disciplinary panel held, somewhat aptly at the Royal Courts of Justice.

The just turned 20-year-old centre was given a five-week ban, but that means he could still force his way into England World Cup reckoning. Some punishment, huh. Now just imagine if said unedifying attack was committed during a football match in as high a profile as this encounter was, say an FA Cup semi-final. What would the uppercut, sorry, upshot be?

Well, you can bet your bottom season ticket that there would be hell – if not unleashed, then certainly to pay.

The game, a country mile ahead in popularity of any other sport in England and that includes the oft-quoted angling – I mean how many thousands shell out loads of shekels week in, week out to watch men sit on a riverbank or box holding a thin pole in front of them? – would have been castigated as if its proponents were devils in replica shirts.

Football is frequently targeted as an example of crass behaviour peopled by loutish no-marks both on and off the field.

Conveniently forgetting that the game is the people’s sport, football is often held up as some sort of example as to what is most wrong with our society.

If it’s not social commentators making scabrous sound-bites or spinning populist misconceptions, other sports also join in the pastime of giving it a damn good kicking.

How many times have you heard rugby union’s talking heads shaking their cauliflower-eared bonces at the antics of footballers? Too often I have heard the 13-a-side code clan bad-mouthing football for its excesses in on the park behaviour – the haranguing of referees, the many refusals to cleanly and concisely accept decisions, the argy-bargy seemingly breaking out at every stoppage.

The world in union also pooh-pooh the injury histrionics of those who ply their trade in the 11-a-side game.

After the “bloodgate” fiasco you’d think all rugby union followers would just belt up on that score. I mean take two blood capsules on to the pitch – hardly a great advert for the game, that is it.

And in union circles it seems perfectly valid for players to vent their frustrations by any variety of punching, slapping, whacking, cracking, gouging. It’s not as if the volence meted out in union games is always overt either.

There’s the snide hits, punches and yanking that goes on in the scrum or the boots to other indelicate parts in the ruck.

But according to the public-school, house-masterly apologists that’s all part and parcel of the game.

Well, no it isn’t. It’s just outright thuggery and downright violence which, if repeated on the street and witnessed would surely bring about some prosecution by the police.

What rugby union carpists also forget is that the majority of football followers bristle at the disrespectful antics of their favourites.

Surrounding referees and linesmen with neck veins all a-bulge is behaviour most fans condemn and would love to consign to the memory bank. But a crucial difference between football and union – and one made eruditely by former Leeds United and Scotland midfielder and one-time Celtic and Middlesbrough manager Gordon Strachan – is that rugby players frustrated at an official’s decision (they don’t always get things right) can then launch themselves into the next big challenge, the next big tackle, the next big hit.

For footballers there’s no such escape valve, and so more often than not the big mouths runneth overtime.

So union – don’t always play the blame game until your own unruly house is in order.