Indeed, instances of foul play which have gone before the courts stand out because of their rarity. Rugby league player Jarrod McCracken is perhaps now remembered less for his hard-running style than for his five-year court battle to win a civil case for negligence after two Melbourne Storm players ended his career with a spear tackle.
In British football, two incidents highlight a glaring double standard in this area. In 1994, Rangers player Duncan Ferguson was jailed for a headbutt on an opponent which did not badly injure the victim. Contrast this with the case of former Manchester United captain Roy Keane, who escaped charges despite detailing in his autobiography how he had deliberately set out to injure Alf Inge Harland in 2001. If Keane was, say, a car dealer and had written a book confessing to a baseball bat attack on a rival's knees it is easy to imagine a different outcome.
The ugly side of the beautiful game has been on full display again in recent days during the John Terry trial, in which the Chelsea player was charged with racially abusing Anton Ferdinand, a mixed race player from West Ham. In this instance, the alleged abuse did escape the field and make it into the courtroom. It was a curious case which hinged on a Youtube video showing Terry, the former England captain, mouthing an abusive phrase.
He was cleared after arguing he was merely repeating what he thought he had been accused of saying - but he is not out of the woods yet with the English FA declaring it may pursue the matter further. The way the case proceeded was in stark contrast with the furore surrounding Liverpool player Luis Suarez last year. Suarez was found guilty of racially abusing Manchester United's Patrice Evra but the sanction remained within the sport. Banned for eight games, the Uruguayan faced no criminal charges.
The debate over racism in sport which has inevitably been rekindled by such high-profile cases came sadly close to home with a referee banned for racially abusing a spectator at a Dunedin football match earlier this season. The referee has been banned, but again it is easy to imagine this progressing beyond the jurisdiction of football authorities.
It would be foolish to argue that competitive sport does not arouse passions which can make people behave unreasonably and act in ways they later regret. Australians call it white-line fever, where ostensibly mild-mannered individuals become crazed hot- heads once they step on to the field. At the lower extreme, the arousing of competitive juices on a sportsfield is seen by some as a safety valve - the field itself a clearly marked square where people can bash into each other and let off steam before shaking hands at the final whistle.
But there is no room for foul play or abuse. Nor should there be extra allowances made for the type of vicious invective which would not pass as acceptable off the field. The sub-plot which grew during the Terry trial was the excessive level of personal abuse to which players from both teams subjected each other. One British newspaper commented that it had run out of asterisks as it reported the foul-mouthed tirades. Some would argue this is a legitimate part of the game.
If you can needle an opponent and they are weak-minded enough to be affected by it, that's their problem. But the exchanges reported during the trial were stomach-churning, and have led to calls in the UK for players to be "red-carded for foul and abusive language to each other".
Whether this gains traction remains to be seen. But if football - and sport in general - is serious about stamping out racism, perhaps some of the other graceless behaviour exhibited by a number of the highest paid players can also be eliminated.
