Editorial: Guilt is in the eye of the beholder

OPINION: So Dan Carter has been judged, found guilty and given a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket for his high tackle in Cardiff but it's unlikely this will be the end of the matter.

The role of the judiciary in contact sports such as rugby, soccer and rugby league has always been an area of controversy and confusions, laden with accusations of injustice and bias.

The wonder of it all is how often the perpetrator of an act that ends up before the panel can be portrayed as a victim of almost anything except responsibility for the act in question.

And there's the approach the different codes take to disciplinary matters. The governing body of football, FIFA, has a disciplinary code which is a thing of wonder and beauty in terms of its layout and logic. It clearly lays out the scope of its rules and proceeds to spell out the hierarchy of enforcement and accountability.

For the purposes of this discussion Article 8 clearly spells out an important point: "Unless otherwise specified, infringements are punishable regardless of whether they have been committed deliberately or negligently."

The NRL's rugby league competition in Australia also operates in a highly structured manner, using ex-players and officials to rule on matters using a structured code of offences and degree of seriousness to rule and impose sentence.

Rugby by contrast has myriad disciplinary committees depending on the competition. This reaches ridiculous heights in the case of SANZAR and the Super 14 where different committees sit in different countries to pass judgement, often with wildly inconsistent outcomes.

And here's the thing, especially when it comes to rugby and rugby league. Despite all the hearings being conducted in a quasi-judicial environment with lawyers to the left and right no one is ever really sure of the outcome. For years, Kiwis have complained about the NRL judiciary when it seems to deprive us of our best players around test time.

Rugby has even more extreme variations depending on the venue and the situation where particular acts can receive a couple of weeks or a couple of months, even when no difference in the act itself is apparent to observers.

So Dan the Man has been given one week for his high tackle, despite many in the New Zealand camp saying there was no case to answer. The fact that the ban covers only one week and a game against Italy in which Carter was unlikely to have played anyway means the effects are minimal.

This is where the point needs to be made that in most jurisdictions, intent has no bearing on whether an act is punishable or not. More importantly, one wonders what the view of New Zealanders would have been if Welsh halfback Martin Roberts had hit Carter high and maybe stopped a key scoring movement when the All Blacks were behind. When it comes to judicial matters on the rugby field, it appears guilt is very often in the eye of the beholder.

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