50 days? Robbie Geoghegan's Galway ban is a draconian and spiteful punishment

Matters legal are hardly this column’s area of expertise, but you don’t need to be Saul Goodman to grasp the basics of justice and fairness, and sport tends to be regulated on an extension of those fundamental principles, notwithstanding how subjective refereeing decisions have the capacity to infuriate.

Rugby is a sport I’ve always been able to take or leave over the years, although there’s a World Cup on the horizon so I’m sure I’ll find a space on the bandwagon shortly. Without having intimate knowledge of its rule book, it’s a game that has its ducks in a row when it comes to regulation. The referee is fairly unanimously respected by the participants and the implementation of the rules tends to be mostly intelligible.

In particular, when it comes to on-field transgressions, fouls that can be ascribed as deliberate, dangerous or cynical trigger the more severe sanction of a penalty, with accidental infringements settled by a scrum.