It has always struck me that football’s moral code is upside down.
And as distasteful as the latest Luis Suarez incident was, it hasn’t changed my mind.
Biting is a relatively new phenomenon in the British game, with Jermain Defoe the only man that anybody can think of who has previously been inducted into this particular hall of shame in recent years.
But, from the reaction to Suarez sinking his teeth into Branislav Ivanovic on Sunday, my finger in the wind would put biting as a new entry at joint first with spitting on the heinous-crimes-on-a-pitch-ometer in the eyes of many involved in the game.
It shouldn’t be.
Suarez on Ivanovic doesn’t even scrape into my top (bottom) 10 offences for the season.
The football authorities, clubs and managers should be more concerned with the career-threatening tackle which never whips up the “sack him” clamour that a spit or a bite will.
Saliva can be wiped away, and teethmarks will wear off, but there’s nothing superficial about a leg break or ligament damage which can be the consequence of brutal lunges that still bedevil the game.
If Suarez is banned for six games that would be about right.
But don’t try and tell me what he did to Ivanovic was worse than what Wigan’s Callum McManaman inflicted on Newcastle’s Massadio Haidara last month.
One man didn’t even pierce the skin, the other could have snapped a leg in two.
Ask Haidara if he would rather have been spat on or bitten by McManaman than scythed at the shin.
Or better still, ask the prematurely-retired John Kennedy.
He’d probably tell you he’d let Mike Tyson loose on his ear as opposed to a Romanian on his leg.