WE'VE all seen it, we've all winced and shuddered at it.

Callum McManaman's horror tackle on Newcastle United defender Massadio Haidara is set to be one of football's images of the season, for good or ill.

For ill, because it displays the worst of the game. For good, because the outcry at the tackle and the FA's subsequent unwillingness to punish might sting the mandarins at Wembley Stadium - who appear to spend much of their time sitting on their hands - into some sort of action to alter the rules govern their approach to retrospective sanctions for such offences.

It is time to cast aside the laughable platitudes about being unable to take action, because one of the match officials saw the incident.

Since the FA announced that McManaman would go unpunished, it has fallen back on a frankly redundant argument that re-refereeing incidents must be avoided.

Why?

Referees are human. So are linesmen (sorry, but I hate the term referee's assistant). The pace of the game nowadays, allied to unforeseen factors such as the officials' view being obscured by other players, means that even if an incident is seen or - as we have been led to believe is the case with the McManaman tackle, partially seen - mistakes or misjudgements occur.

If footballing authorities were to decide that a referee had made the wrong decision over a foul, even if they had seen it, and were to announce a retrospective punishment for the player or players involved, the sky is not going to fall in on said referee's head. He or she will not be turned to cinders by a judgemental lightning bolt of celestial origin.

If he or she is strong enough, they will not feel undermined. They will learn from the circumstances and redouble their efforts to get it right next time.

But to let a tackle like that, which could have ended Haidara's career in an instant, go unpunished is unforgiveable.

Even the Premier League's chief executive Richard Scudamore, a man usually given to seeking ever more outlandish ways of lining his organisation's pockets than to seeking the moral high ground, believes the FA is wrong.

He believes the McManaman tackle qualifies as an exceptional incident, which frees the FA from the need to wring its metaphorical hands over re-refereeing and leaves it able to punish the Wigan player.

It will not, however. It has made its decision, however wrong, and is too lily-livered to admit it has erred and seek to put things right.

So Haidara begins what could be a long road back to fitness. But he is not the only one who might be damaged by this unsavoury episode, though his is the most grievous hurt.

McManaman might have been better served by a punishment, whatever he and his club think about the matter.

At least then, he would have been seen to have paid for the consequences, rather than to have got away with one of the game's more extreme, if clumsy, acts of player-on-player savagery of recent times.

If the boos that greet him in subsequent matches and seasons - particularly from Newcastle United fans - are consequently louder, longer and more vitriolic, his career remembered primarily for that tackle, then the lion's share of the blame can be laid squarely at the door of the FA.

 

Six Nations whets apettite for Lions feast down under 

IN the aftermath of Wales' steamrollering of England in the Six Nations decider last weekend, thoughts have turned to the British Lions tour in Australia.

There is sure to be a hefty Welsh presence on the plane Down Under, and quite rightly, but with more than two months of rugby still to play for the majority of Lions contenders, many places are still up for grabs.

Not just because some players, like Dragons flanker Dan Lydiate, will be making a late charge for inclusion having been missing through injury. But because there is still plenty of time for form to be regained or lost.

Plenty of time too for the curse of injury to befall potential tourists.

Many a nailed-on certainty for previous Lions tours has not even made the plane because of a late injury calamity.

With the internationals over, it is perhaps unrealistic for those in the frame for a tour place not to be thinking about the possibility.

But equally, they will be trying to adhere to the old cliché about taking one game at a time - and in such a physical sport as rugby union, that has to be the most sensible course of action.

Still, mere spectators like me can't wait though. Can you?