What a disgrace!

The spectator was prized off the referee and marched, nose bloodied, from the field.

What a disgrace! What a disgusting first for international rugby! What a disgrace for South Africa! What a disgrace for South African rugby!

Then you sit stunned and wonder how on earth such a thing can happen. Then you wonder who is to blame.

The benighted individual who did the deed is certainly to blame. Millions of people could see that. He was to blame.

And yet perhaps blame goes further than that. Was he not just the incarnation of all the aggressive criticism of referees in recent times?

There is nothing so bad that could not get worse. That is a fact.

If Jonathan Kaplan and Wayne Erickson are pelted at Westpac Trust Stadium and Ellis Park, things will get worse. If George Gregan and Deon Kayser are tackled by spectators at Rotorua International Stadium and Ballymore, things will get worse. If we have streakers charging at the kicker at Telstra Stadium in Sydney, things will get worse, especially if there is a measure of official connivance and hanging on to money is more important than the good conduct of the game.

Then if referees have repeatedly to endure the slings and arrows criticism in the Tri-Nations and nothing is done about it, nothing at all is seen to be done about it, the seeds of today's outrage are sewn.

The Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli complains in public about Stuart Dickinson, and nothing is done about it.

Andrew Mehrtens, the New Zealand flyhalf, voices even more strident criticism of the referee - and something will perhaps be done about it in the week after the Test. Not upsetting the flyhalf is much, much more important than respect for the referee and his position.

After two defeats in Australasia the criticism of referees in South Africa approaches paranoia. It is fuelled by media. Even after the bizarre happenings in Durban, television commentators after the match are criticising the referee's decisions as if they mattered in the scheme of things.

There is blame in all of that.

Everybody at ABSA Stadium in Durban who booed when the referee made or did not make a decision that they did not like is to blame. That spectator is putting their aggressive and insulting noises into physical action. Words often become deeds. Words were not enough for the spectator. He wanted sticks and stones as well.

He was an expression of all the booing and insults that referees everywhere are enduring.

Nothing - nothing, nothing at all - that David McHugh of Cork in Ireland, the man entrusted with the refereeing of the match, did warranted the assault on him. It did not warrant the raucous booing. It certainly did not warrant the physical assault.

What rugby now needs to do is sit down and examine itself in all its aspects - its codes of conduct for players and officials, and its packaging and marketing of the game as more and more it moves from sport to entertainment with a change of spirit/soul and so of behaviour.

The game used to be one where the violence, as allowed by the Laws of the Game, happened on the field. On the field there was gentlemanly conduct. It rejoiced in being different from soccer.

Those days, it seems, are gone.

And so we have disgrace. And it will get worse. There is nothing so bad that will not get worse.