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My position on player discipline typically involves miscreants being deported to Guantanamo Bay where they would be forced to write out the law-book 10,000 times using a worn-out bookies’ biro.

But even by my standards European rugby bosses have gone too far.

Monday’s weekly list of citings from a gritty round of Champions and Challenge Cup combat read something like the charge sheet on a Bigg Market stag do.

Eye-gouging, testicle-grabbing, biting, punching and pushing over the referee. The only thing missing was a dodgy donner and an over-priced taxi.

On face value it was a return to an era when an absence of TV cameras and neutral touch judges meant free rein for bully boys to dish out haymakers and lashings of shoe pie with virtual impunity.

Either the glory days or the dark ages, depending on your vintage, but drilling beneath the headlines tells a somewhat different story.

The ban dished out to England wing Chris Ashton for ‘contact with the eye area’ against Ulster should have been no more than a penalty in the view of this humble scribe. If that.

He will now miss the Six Nations unless he successfully appeals his 10-week suspension - four weeks less than Clermont’s Viktor Kolelishvili got for pushing over referee Wayne Barnes in their defeat at Ospreys.

The firey flanker is no Paolo di Canio.

Barnes was clearly blocking his defensive channel, he asked him to move and when the official did not he gave him an ill-advised but fairly gentle shove.

Barnes stayed on his feet, rightfully awarded a penalty but showed commendable empathy in his sanction, unlike the disciplinary panel who went draconian on the big Georgian.

Glasgow’s ex-Newcastle lock Tim Swinson was yellow-carded for a short-arm jab on a Northampton forward who had just smashed into his ribs during a maul in a dramatic Champions Cup climax.

Fair enough, but sure as eggs are eggs, the Scotland international rapidly joined the list of players going up before the beak.

Nowhere in this column am I advocating players attacking each other’s heads, eyes or indeed family jewels.

The judiciary is there to maintain order and we all want an inclusive game which keeps player safety right up there on the list of priorities.

But the over-the-top bans currently being dished out like confetti bear no resemblance to the game I am watching, which is infinitely less violent than even a decade ago.

I’ve not witnessed a proper punch-up with clean blows landed in a Premiership game for longer than I can remember, however much the forward packs posture as they hug and push each other in heated moments of pretend conflict.

If rugby sanitises itself beyond reasonable commonsense paramaters it runs the risk of removing the aggression which is one of its main unique selling points.

By no stretch of the imagination would I advocate a return to the ‘thugby’ of yesteryear. But my advice to the disciplinary panel is be careful what you wish for.